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Comment by 4gotunameagain | Hacker News Reader

How does Germany recycle 60% of its plastic waste?

There is obviously hope, just not enough incentive because it costs.

Step one: virtually eliminate uneccesary plastic so there's far less waste and ideally most is of the type that can be recycled.

I've not been in Germany for a long while, but I was impressed when last there by a near complete absence of excess packaging, nails in big boxes sold by weight rather than pre sorted into tiny plastic packets, etc.

No idea if they kept that up.

Addendum: Apparently so, and they have 5 types of household bins for seperating waste: https://greenendeavour.com.au/is-germanys-waste-management-s...

Yea, that's basic culture here. The bins are also sized according, and using the recycle bins is cheaper. There is still unsorted/compound waste, but plastics + metals go into the yellow/recycle bin automatically. Same for paper. Municipal waste centers are basically recycling sorters, where you have to declare waste type. You can offload recyclables for free and other waste costs you an arm and a leg, so there most certainly is incentive to follow.

Not that I'd take the recycling percentage at face value, there are certainly challenges. But the overall system is fairly solid.

Culture and regulation, and.. enforcement. In the Netherlands we have separate garbabe bins for various waste streams for many years. Culturally accepted by now. But there's not much enforcement of people who make a mess in these bins. In Switzerland when hiring a vacation appartment I noticed how people are frantically trying to separate correctly, and you receive strict instructions to do so too. There's enforcement and fines if you are too lax.

German waste processing is however known for simply dumping things in Eastern Europe. In terms of actual processing I think only the Netherlands breaches 50%. I don't like the 9 trash streams though.

The number is greenwashing because it's including "thermal Recycling" aka burning.

https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/ressourcen-abfall/verwe...

How is that even allowed to be called recycling? As in, is it genuinely a term defined legally and, if so, who allowed this to happen? Because burning is most certainly not recycling.

Recycled as fuel. Its not that bad energy-wise. We have power plants running off that stuff.

Some people consider it a better use of oil than burning it directly.

Goverment can make it's own rules I guess...

Do you have a source for that? I'd be interested to read more, because there are similar statistics that only count the percentage collected, not the percentage actually recycled. e.g. there's quite a bit of "mixed" recycling in the UK, which firms count as "being recycled", but when they get to the recycling plant if there's "too much" contamination (e.g. food, non-recyclable plastic etc.) then it's sent to the incinerator.

https://www.sustainableplastics.com/news/germanys-plastic-re...

https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/indicators/waste-recyc...

I am unaware of the percentage of rejected contaminated plastics you mentioned, but Germans being Germans I assume it is not scandalous

Thanks, will take a look.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container-deposit_legislation

I can't even begin to imagine the discourse (and "experts" brought on-air at Fox News) that would take place if such legislation was proposed in the US.

A few states in the US as per your link, do have this system

Differences:

* Single-use plastic bottle have a 25 cent deposit in Germany. This is 5x the 5cents in California.

* Germany has enacted this legislation federally.

* The legislation also requires that any retailer that sells plastic bottles (and glass bottles) must also facilitate the return of these bottles.

I lived in California for a couple of years. I never saw a recycling machine at any Safeway, Walgreens or even Whole Foods while I was there. The closest thing to a "recycling machine" is the army of homeless people pushing trollies filled with bottles to take to a recycling center. I don't think that really counts.

Michigan does have the sorting machines at supermarkets, just like in Germany. Michigan also has a 10¢ deposit.

We do. As Fox News likes to point out, it's hard to find a place that'll actually let you recycle for the full refund.

In Europe the store that sold the deposit bottles has to also accept them back.

That used to be true here, but they added so many exceptions that the law isn't really enforced

In Michigan, I never ran into difficulty outside of needing to take it to a store that sells it (Trader Joe's is the biggest pain). Supposedly there were a lot of places putting arbitrary hours on when they accept them now, but I've never heard anyone not get the "full refund" unless a machine malfunctions.

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