> To encourage more people to take back their bottles, Mr. Fritsche has toyed with the idea of nearly doubling the deposit that customers pay on their reusable beer bottles, to 15 cents. But larger brewers argue that increasing the deposit price is not the solution because they have too many bottles in circulation and that it would be a complicated process.

So, they're not serious. If they had a real shortage, they'd be thrilled to buy back bottles at effectively ~8 cents per bottle (the amount they'd 'overpay' for old bottles sold with the original deposit). Cheaper and easier to ask the public to work for free returning more bottles despite inflation.