Glass bottles (beer, juice, milk and yoghurt) are "Mehrweg" ("multi-use"), and they actually want a bottle to sterilize and reuse (preferably with metal lid in the case of the milk and joghurt bottles), so if it's broken, it's technically trash and should go in the Altglas (old glass) containers you see at least once in every city neighborhood.
There is also a special case of a Mehrweg 1L plastic bottle, used mostly by Coca Cola. It is also sterilised before reuse.
> preferably with metal lid in the case of the milk and joghurt bottles
Ooops, I didn't know that. Thank you.
For beer bottles, I dunno, try it out and report back?
Or do you mean the beer can? In this case they can't be crushed, because the barcode has to be readable!
A friend tried hehe. If they're not too damaged you can put them back into shape, the machine is quite robust.
We have this system also in Germany since the late 80s (I think) and it works very well. Current incentive ranges from 8ct (beer glass bottles ... beer lobby always has exceptions ;)) to 25ct (plastic bottles)