I feel the same way. Most people who drink at my place regularly know that they’re under standing orders to save clean, pop-top brown bottles anyway.
Totally unrelated, but I’m particularly coveting New Belgium bottles right now. They aren’t admissible for most comps, but the smooth curve throughout the neck means that they hardly foam at all when bottled from the tap.
These are precious. I’ll give them to very few who I know will return them.
But they still only get green grolsch bottles, nothing better.
The brown vintage grolsch bottles stay with me.
I never give out my 1-liter flip-tops, but I do bring a bunch with me whenever i visit a friend’s house and they always leave with me! However I give out 12oz bottles freely and don’t care if they come back or not.
I end up with more full bottles coming in from homebrewers than going out. I’ll bring a keg or a growler somewhere, but that leaves with me.
Now that I mainly keg, I really don’t care. But, When I did give bottles out, I always made sure to when I gave them the beer, to give a good lesson on how to properly rinse the bottle. I told them that the bottle being returned clean makes it a lot easier for me to fill it for “them” next time. It worked 90% of the time. The other 10% just did not get anymore beer. Not that a few bottles were a big deal, but to me it was a respect thing. I was kind enough to give them my beer, and the only thing I asked for was a bottle back. I’m sorry, but if you can’t show me that little bit of appreciation, no beer for you.
You know, despite all my best efforts so far I still manage to buy plenty of bottled beer. My perspective is to not expect the bottles back. Hell, I don’t want them back if the truth be told. 
I save the six-pack cartons and give’em a sixxer to carry home.
It seems that more eco-friendly breweries tend to go with labels which are stuck on with water-soluble adhesive.
When I get a load of empties, I throw them into a 20-gallon garbage can filled with Oxy-clean or its equivalent and let them soak overnight or a couple of days. Most labels give up after that treatment. The stubborn ones generally mostly come off if you scrape them using a table knife. Use the serrated side for initial scraping and the back of the knife for clean-up.
While I’d probably be smarter to let the really nasty bottles go, I’m too bloody-minded. I like something to do with my hands (ADHD), so I don’t mind scraping bottles while I’m watching TV or doing something similarly passive.
^^^^^^^ this.
I get cases of bottles from a group of folks and when I’ve gotten ones that are hard to do, I’ve sent emails saying “no more cases of Brand X.” If an overnight soak in a cooler full of hot water and oxy doesn’t work, I don’t use those types of bottles again.
And also, all people who get bottles from me are told that I’m a lot more likely to give refills for rinsed out bottles. My regulars do that without asking anymore, some of them even wash them out for me.
I did that once with a load of bottles that I picked up from a friend’s party. I put the trash can out on the patio overnight. Didn’t get to it the next day and then we had a sudden cold snap. No problem, just surface ice, I just had a few embedded longnecks stuck in the ice. Figured I’d just let it thaw. Only the cold snap decided to hang around for a while and the trash can froze solid. A few weeks later it thawed. Nice trash can full of broken bottles soaking in bleach and water. I had to use my Zapap lauter bucket as a big strainer so I could pour out the water. Every single bottle was busted, usually with the bottom cleanly removed, and many snapped longnecks as well. But those labels came right off!
I definitely can relate and understand your frustration with the bottles but it’s tough to get them back at times. Most of my close friends understand how long it was to initially take off all of the labels of my 200+ bottles so they’re pretty good about getting them back.
Maybe take some time to explain to them what the process is like? Good luck!
I don’t bother with removing labels, but have about ten different colors of caps… I don’t bottle very much though.
+1,000,000,000 !!!
SNPA bottles are the easiest to remove labels and the contents bring great joy. ;D There are few others that are just as easy but I can’t recall which ones right off the top of my head. I’ve got a bunch of bottles or so that I need to remove labels from, will be removing Founders for the first time so I’ll see how that goes.