Will you move to Germany? Then first, you should inform yourself about household waste disposal because, in this country, recycling is a sensitive issue. Here you will find everything you need to know.The population of Germany is very aware of waste management and they really take it seriously, getting to recycle more than 70% of the garbage they generate. The system is not complex, each household has its own containers (Müllcontainer), and each person must be responsible for depositing in each of them the appropriate waste.

By doing this activity, we are recycling the garbage and helping the environment. Each waste must go in its corresponding place depending on its material, and here you must be careful because if you do not recycle properly and do not follow the community’s rules, you will have a penalty fee.

To know where to put the waste disposal, here we will help you to understand the meaning of the different color bins in the city:

Yellow Bags (Gelbe Sack)

Here in principle, we should throw away any plastic bottle, but it is not convenient to do so since we can get money for them in case the bottle has a “Pfand” symbol, which means they are returnable but you can deposit any other plastic such as detergent and oil bottles. We will also introduce here all the bricks we have (milk, tomato sauce, etc). aluminum, metal bottle caps, cigarette packs, snack and soup bags, sauces and condiments packages, empty aerosol cans, etc.

Blue Container

suitable for paper, so here you can place the german newspapers that you do not need, paper brochures, magazines, desk/office paper and cardboard in general; packaging, and cardboard boxes; magazines and books.What you should not throw here: remains of toilet paper, towel paper for the kitchen, waxed baking paper, disposable handkerchiefs, photographic paper, vegetal and tracing paper.

Brown Container (Biotonne)

appropriate for any type of biological waste. Here we have to deposit the remains of food such as banana peels, pieces of bread, fruit remains, etc. as well as leaves of trees or plants if you have a garden.

Green – Grünglass/Buntglass, white – Weisglass and brown – Braunglass:

It is important to separate the white, green and brown glass.

Sometimes there is a container for each color, but in general, there are only two: white and green, which in this case is called Buntglass where all the colored bottles will be wasted, and in the Weißgalss only transparent bottles will be thrown away.

What you can throw here: glass bottles in general; jam, sauce, honey, or preserve containers; perfumes, medicine bottles, etc.

What you should not throw here: bottles or containers’ metallic covers, light bulbs, glasses, ceramic and porcelain artifacts, leaded glass, mirrors or the glass of the windows.

Black Container

Here we will place anything that does not fit with any of those described above, such as a metal can, a coffee capsule, etc. In case you do not have or do not see a brown container, here we will put what we would throw in that container.

Once all our waste disposal has been deposited in the appropriate containers, the public services of each city will be responsible for collecting them once each two weeks.

If there is no container or bins, the garbage is placed inside yellow bags and must be guided by a calendar indicating the day and time where they will pick it up. That means that on that day all the neighbors will take the bags to the street.

Old clothes and shoes

The clothes that people do not wear anymore have its own place too. To dispose of clothing that can still be used, it is deposited in special donation containers named Kleiderspende.

The cities allow by law that associations or non-profit organizations install this type of garment containers, which do not have a fixed place, and sometimes they change its place. Binds that do not have the name and address of their organization are from private companies that then sell these clothes.

Battery Disposal

In different cities, there are several places where batteries of different types can be recycled. The most convenient thing is to approach the supermarkets and deposit them in a special container just for batteries.

How many bags would you take in the supermarket if you had to pay for each one knowing that it takes about 400 years to degrade? How many would you rule out if you understood that one and a half million animals die at sea each year because of plastic waste?

The human intention to improve the quality of life causes irremediable damage to the environmental ecosystem. Despite the global importance of this situation, there are still few nations that promote serious policies to minimize pollution and take advantage of existing resources. Germany is one of them because its waste management recycling is an example to follow.

error: Content is protected !!