Barbara Geier: Champions of waste separation

On a scale of one to ten, how are your waste separation and recycling skills? Since living in the UK with its less, let’s say, stringent and meticulous approach to the matter, mine have deteriorated badly. Every time I’m back in Germany I feel bad that I’m not quite sure anymore where to put what or – shock, horror – even forget to engage in the required yoghurt cup cleaning and the like.

But – again, shock, horror – it seems that Germany’s mastery of the bin and dedication to recycling since the ‘Green Dot’ was introduced back in 1990 under the then Environment Minister Klaus Töpfer to reduce waste streams seems to be on the wane. At the start of the year, the Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt/UBA) felt compelled to call on people in Germany to focus more on waste separation. While the overall trend is positive with more packaging being recycled, the Germans are not the ‘world champions’ of waste separation anymore because, frankly, too much ends in the wrong bins and is either lost for recycling or, in the case of residual waste being dumped in the yellow (recycling) bins, makes recycling more difficult. Or in official UBA press release language: “The biggest challenges in recycling are incorrect pre-sorting and waste separation by consumers. (…) the quality of the collection mix has deteriorated significantly in some cases as a result of incorrect waste disposal.”

Diving deeper into this topic, I learned that there is even a brilliant German compound noun (of course, there would) for incorrect waste disposal, namely ‘Falschwürfe’ or ‘Fehlwürfe’, literally ‘wrongs throws’. Brilliant, isn’t it? Digressing, I know, but let me just stress that while we might not be the world champions of recycling anymore no one is going to take our crown as masters of coming up with new compound nouns where ever and whenever needed. Ok, back to the bin. And the UBA who is concerned that, according to waste management companies, the ‘collection quality’ is now better in other EU countries.

I mean, shock, horror again. Other EU countries better than Germany in getting the recycling right? This must not be. Cue ‘Wertis-KI’, an AI-based app currently being developed at the Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences in Lower Saxony to help people make the right waste separation choices. I like the idea: You point the app at the item in question, it recognises it, suggests the correct ‘route of disposal’ and bob’s your uncle. Even more, it goes beyond the ‘what belongs in which bin’ approach and provides alternatives such as second-hand shops or repair cafés. Based on their website, they’re currently at 70% of the development process. Fingers crossed it’s ready soon to help me out with my recycling woes when next in Germany…

Barbara Geier is a London-based freelance writer, translator and communications consultant. She is also the face behind www.germanyiswunderbar.com, a German travel and tourism guide and blog that was set up together with UK travel writer Andrew Eames in 2010.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Discover Germany, Switzerland & Austria.