CanadianBottles
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Yeah it was always a worry for bottlers back then of how to get people to return the bottles because bottles were expensive back in the day. Up until the 1920's or so they would have legal warnings on them, most commonly "This bottle not to be sold" which was a vague way of saying that only the drink was your property, not the bottle, but some even went as far as to emboss their bottles with the much more explicit "[FONT="]THIS BOTTLE IS OUR PROPERTY ANY CHARGE MADE THEREFOR SIMPLY COVERS ITS USE WHILE CONTAINING GOODS BOTTLED BY US AND MUST BE RETURNED WHEN EMPTY" which covered up a whole half of the bottle. Others tried to appeal to sympathy with: "Please return this bottle, it costs us more than the milk it contains," or shame: "Stolen from _____ ," and a few even tried to strike the fear of God into the people using them by embossing them with "Thou Shalt Not Steal." By the 1950's they'd figured out that deposits were the most effective way to get them back but by then glass had gotten so cheap that they stopped trying to get people to return the bottles at all. Today when bottles are reused I think it's more of an environmental concern than actually being a particularly cost-saving measure, and I think it's only the standard brown beer bottles and glass milk bottles that are getting refilled these days.[/FONT]
