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.
11 August 2005 at 19:15
Visiting from Michele’s site.
I am not a big enviromentalist or anything but I took a college chemistry course a few years ago that had a large focus on recycling and environmental issues and I too began to feel guilty about not recycling. My friend in NY recycles because they have a somewhat mandatory program…more out of necessity than protecting the environment. But in the midwest (missouri)it is a pain in the butt to try to recycle because you have to run all over creation to do it. We recycle aluminum cans but that is really it. I wouldn’t be at all averse to mandatory recycling in the U.S. We need to get a little more proactive about this kind of stuff.
12 August 2005 at 10:39
Recycling in Germany is initially a bit confusing, but if R and A had read Lonely Planet (or pretty much any other guidebook on Germany) it shouldn’t have been a surprise. NYC has Sanitation Police. With guns and everything. I was ticketed in 1991 (unjustly because it was a roommate that did the evil) for magazines improperly disposed of in the “nasty” trash.
12 August 2005 at 11:19
oooo… I so relate to this post. In Halifax we had one of the most advanced recycling programs in Canada, so Andrew and I were used to sorting out recyclables, trash and compost into separate containers. The schedual was very easy to follow though - garbage one Tuesday, compost and recyclable the next. When we moved to Belgium we were presented with a garbage chart… you have to be a rocket scientist to figure the thing out! Our relocation agent shrugged and said … “just look at what everyone else puts out the night before, that’s what I do.” Great, so even the Belgians don’t get it. There are garbage police here too, but so far, I think anyway, we’ve been doing the right thing. Who would have expected trash to be so complicated…
12 August 2005 at 11:53
A. was raised in Germany, so why should we need any guidebooks? Supposedly he knew it all… too bad so many things changed in Germany while he spent a decade in the States!
12 August 2005 at 13:51
Servus!
In my part og Germany, we have three separate cans - one for regular trash, one for Grune Punkt recycleables, and one for food and biological waste. Mercy upon your soul if the Müllpolizei find out that you are not separating bio tash from regular trash! We received a nastygram about this that was written in terminology that could only have been produced by German bueracracy - in no uncertain terms were we to continue this practice and should we do so in the future we could be subject to fines or the revocation of our waste disposal privleges!
The hammer is that we PAY for these services!
Ordnung muss sein!
Pax,
Jake
12 August 2005 at 23:54
We’ve never been caught by the garbage police although I’m sure that we’ve committed uncountable trash crimes. I’m anal about paper and glass, but everything else goes in the same trashcan. I just don’t have enough room in my kitchen to put in a second one. Okay, I HAVE enough room, but it wouldn’t fit the decor. Or something.
So, I’m your half typical German. I care a lot about glass and paper being recycled, but I don’t care a bit about the rest. I bet one day this is all going to backfire.
16 August 2005 at 00:41
There is no “garbage police”. They will simply refuse to empty your bin. If you continue to throw e.g. diapers into the paper or Grüne Punkt container then of course you will be fined eventually. Some human being might have to separate that waste BY HAND. I’d like to see the look on your faces if someone dropped a used, 7 day old diaper onto your office desk. Or decomposing foodstuff evenly spread over half a ton of plastics.
The current laws demand that only 10% of the garbage will be dumped into landfills. That means the shit needs to be recycled, burned and composted. We are spending millions each year trying to contain the toxic waste from 50 or 100 year old landfills, and they will continue to cost us dearly. There simply isn’t enough room in this country, and not enough groundwater. Is separating paper from compost and stuff with the green dot really that difficult?
16 August 2005 at 09:06
As I said, I am not against recycling. I don’t have a problem separating my nasty garbage and my Grüne Punkt and do it faithfully now. It just took some getting used to… that’s all!
16 August 2005 at 13:56
Reycycler,
I think you need to lear the fine art of american-style humor.
I know there is no “garbage police”. Someone from the city comes by once in a while and checks to make sure that the trash is being separated correctly.
No one here has said that “recycling is foolish” Most of us wish the our home country would be so diligent in recycling. I gladly separate my trash - like Reneé, it was the reversal of a lifetime of living in a “throwaway society” which is a long and difficult process.
Please don’t read offense into any of the comments here -I assure you, none was intended.
23 August 2005 at 10:00
Speak for yourself. Where I live we are dilligent about recycling and have been for many years. In regards to NY they absolutely do recycle out of concern for the environment.
Where I live we’ve been recycling for years. I’m happy that Europe seems to catching on.
23 August 2005 at 15:06
Umm… this is my blog, therefore I believe I AM speaking for myself.