Environmental friendly transformation of the german beverage packaging industry by excise taxes.

The study shows that there are no fundamental legal barriers to the introduction of a beverage packaging tax at the German level. At the same time, the studies show that the introduction of a beverage packaging tax can achieve further objectives from existing or projected regulations and that this instrument could thus be introduced in addition to existing regulations. The design of the tax is chosen in such a way that a steering effect is created and the amount of the tax is based on the ecological burdens that are triggered by the choice of beverage packaging. In this way, an internalization of systematically arising external effects can be achieved. As the scenarios show, additional emissions can be saved through optimisations and additional social added value can be created by a smart redistribution of the resulting tax revenue. As a re-sult, the tax could save up to 2.8 million tonnes of CO2 eq in Germany per year and generate tax revenue of up to €15 million. The selected tax amount would result in e.g. non-alcoholic soft drinks or waters in 1-litre non-refillable PET bottles becoming 0.62 EUR more expensive for the end consumer. Whereas the effective price increase due to the tax per 1-litre refillable PET bottle would only be 0.03 EUR (with proportionate rotations). The steering effects are supplemented by additional flanking measures to increase the ecological benefit.