This is a photo I forgot to add onto the end of yesterday’s post. I found these in The Fresh Market. If you look at the Sprite bottles and the Coke Light bottle, you’ll notice there are white rings around them in the middle and at the bottom. The reason they have those rings is because the bottles have been reused.
I don’t know how they do it exactly in Mexico, but bottles in the Philippines look exactly the same way if you buy them from the many ‘sari-sari’ stores, which are mini-convenience stores. The factory ships out bottles of drinks and the shop owner either makes you stand at the store and finish it, or pours the drink into a plastic bag, sticks a straw in it, and hands it to you. This is because the bottles have a deposit on them that they can’t get back until they ship them back to the factory when the truck next arrives.
So, the empty bottles go back to the plant, run through the machines, are refilled and sent back out. Being run through the factory over and over is what gives them the distinctive white rings. So, if you’re ever in a 3rd world country and you see that on the bottles, keep that in mind. It’s not unsafe to consume, or at least I never got sick from it, but I did one time find a candy wrapper inside the bottle, luckily before I had taken a drink from it.
As for why they’re selling them here in the US at an upscale grocery chain, I have no clue. I can only guess that it appeals to some people’s sense of living more simply, though the fact they’re getting imported bottles of cheap soda from a poor country at a high price in a high end grocery store is a bit … ridiculous.
Bradley Farless 
Regarding why they sell re-used bottles like this in the U.S. It has nothing to do with the appeal of the bottle or where it comes from. It has everything to do with the contents itself. In the Philippines, as well as Mexico, Coca-cola uses pure cane sugar as the sweetener. Sugar is preferred over corn syrup which is used in the U.S. Most Americans are used to the corn syrup, but purists who were drinking sugared Coke before the New Coke fiasco prefer the older formula.
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Thanks for the insight. I did notice the difference in taste when I was outside the US. I prefer the normal sugar as well. Not that excessive sugar is really healthy anyway, but it's also not as fattening as corn syrup and tastes better too.
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