I love their recycling program
By kimberlylynn
@kimberlylynn (978)
United States
December 22, 2007 9:48pm CST
I wish we could adopt the recycling program that we had in Germany. As I take out my humongous sized trash can every week I think back to the small one I had their that never got full. There was not much in it, just things that touched meat or fish. Food was put in the compost, paper in the paper recycling, you took bottles to the recycling area in your neighborhood, the yellow bags was for plastic, aluminum and most anything else that can be re-used. Then they had the days when you could put anything out to be picked up but 99% of it would be collected by people who recycle the products and maybe fix and resell them. My trash can is full this week, and that makes me sad. I do recycle newspapers, aluminum, plastic, and glass but we have so much packaging here and many things that are not accepted at the local plant! One day we will all have to build our houses on a heap of garbage!
3 people like this
5 responses
@AD11RGUY (1265)
• United States
23 Dec 07
Wow! How cool is that?! When I was very young, the city of Los Angeles had pretty much the same program. We had 3 cans, one for organic materials, one for combustible and one for containers. The refuse trucks had two different compartments to handle the separated wastes of containers and organics. Every house had a burning bin (I don't remember what they were actually called now) in the back where the combustibles were burned. Seemed like a great idea. Then the realization of the pollution from burning came about, so the city canned the whole program! I'm sure now days, there is a program of sorts to separate the waste but I'm sure it's not as efficient as the one in Germany. We rely on "transfer stations" to separate the waste for us now, so there is no longer any individual involvement. But at least there is an attempt to make things better. I still recycle cans and plastic myself, but the rest goes to the T/S.
1 person likes this
@kimberlylynn (978)
• United States
26 Dec 07
I wish we could all learn from their example. Oh and I forgot, you even get special trash bags for diapers! We all hear how many diapers babies take up but when you actually see the giant bag full (they only picked up every 2 weeks) it really makes you realize it. Not sure what they did with those but since they don't decomponse maybe in a different area.
@cosylvia (398)
• China
23 Dec 07
so humongous idea..wish someday this dream can come true use the heap of garbage can build our house ,as we know we try to buy a house for ours will take more times of our life,only for a house,so pressure of life,so wish you have a good day and merry christmas
1 person likes this
@dianne17k (587)
• Philippines
23 Dec 07
I wish we had the recycling system you described here in the Philippines. I always wanted to make compost but I live in an apartment building so it isn't possible. There's no waste segregation here. Even if you separate plastics, aluminum, and other stuff at home it's useless because when they collect the garbage they just dump it in all together. I guess lots of my countrymen lack the discipline for such programs. It's kinda sad in thinking of what you said that we will someday have to build our houses on a heap of garbage.
@kimberlylynn (978)
• United States
26 Dec 07
I have known several people from teh Philippines and they all say that garbage is a big issue. It also seems people tend to just throw trash everywhere, but that seems to be the case most places if you ask me.
1 person likes this
@emrald1 (48)
• India
8 Jan 08
Germany's green-dot program is just astounding. When i had gone to Frankfurt last year, i was amazed to see that the supermarkets and some of the malls in the city dint give any poly (plastic) bags to carry you stuff for free, which i think is cool so people will avoid plastic bags. So you have to buy a normal size plastic bag aswell for around 35 cents or so to take your stuff home. There was Another thing that i loved was, when buy a cola bottle made of plastic, and if you return that empty cola bottle, you get around 25 to 50 cents back. This idea is simply great you know!. I only wish we had this program running here aswell. Say whatever its very good for the environments and for the people living here.
