Incoherent Scribblings

The Rules of Recycling

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I have never been against recycling: When you think about the amount of garbage an average person produces in a day, week, month, or year and how much of that garbage could easily be recycled into something new, recycling is obviously a socially responsible thing to do.

However, at the same time, up until three years ago I never lived anywhere that had a decent, convenient, or even mandatory recycling system. So, with the exception of when I lived in Iowa and got 5 cents for every (soda) pop can I returned, I am a little ashamed to admit that until I moved to Germany I never recycled.

But thanks in large part to the Green Party, Germany has not only a serious recycling program, it is mandatory. Nevertheless, though recycling is mandatory here, it is also one of those things that an expat might not find out about until it is too late.

When A. and I moved to our village outside of Munich and registered with city hall, they gave us a packet of information about our little town, but it only included the location and opening hours of what we thought was the city dump. We noticed the “yellow bags,” but dismissed them as mere garbage bags.

For the first three or four weeks we were here, we spent most of our time at IKEA and various other stores buying furniture and other necessary items for our apartment. The packaging obviously produced a lot of cardboard, styrofoam, and plastic trash and we happily carried it down to the dumpster without so much as a second thought.

My dishes and cooking equipment had not yet arrived, so we ate out most of the time and didn’t really produce a lot of what I like to call “nasty” garbage like potato peelings, rotten meat, or moldy bread. We did produce a lot of “packaging” garbage like milk cartons, but once again we just threw them away, barely noticing the “Grüne Punkt” visibly stamped on their sides.

One morning though, as we were lugging our latest IKEA junk pile down to the dumpster, we ran into our “Hausmeister” (or maintenance man) and he confronted us. At the time I didn’t speak any German, so I didn’t know what was going on, but A. informed me we had been throwing away our cardboard “improperly” and without any further explanation, he told me that we needed to take our cardboard back upstairs.

Later A. told me that in his discussion with the Haumeister, he had been informed all about Germany’s “Recycling Rules.” We learned that what we thought was merely the dump, was actually the city’s recycling area and it was there we were supposed to take cardboard, old wood, bottles, and paper… among other things. It was also there that we could get the famous yellow bags (for free). Once we had the yellow bags, we were supposed to put things with the “Grüne Punkt” into them and they would be collected once a month.

We were warned that it was imperative that we follow Germany’s “Recycling Rules” because you never know when your dumpsters might get a visit from the “Recycling Police!”

Apparently, the “Recycling Police” are much feared here because their sole responsibility is to go through garbage and if they find stuff in the “nasty garbage” that should have been recycled, dispense fines. And since in an apartment building it is nearly impossible to tell whose garbage is whose, the “Recycling Police” will punish an entire building for one family’s garbage negligence. This, of course, will not make you very popular with your neighbors and if they find out that it was you that caused the fine, your stay in the apartment building will be uncomfortable, to say the very least.

As far as I know, our building has never been visited by the “Recycling Police,” or if it has, they were satisfied with what they found. However, if they ever do decide to poke through our dumpsters, thanks to our gruff Hausmeister, A. and I can rest assured that it is not our garbage that is to blame.