Take a look at your town; take a look at the people around you, at the streets, and the garbage cans. How much of the garbage do you think is recycled ? After that, think about how much trash gets labeled as “non-recyclable” by the recycling facility and will end up in a dump somwhere. After you do this, think about the fact that Neustadt an der Weinstrasse, a city with over 50.000 inhabitants in Germany, successfully recycles over 70% of all the garbage it creates.
The town itself is lovely; located in a wine producing area, it has a charming medieval look to it, and it’s one of the greenest cities around the world. Just so you can make a comparison, the average recycling rate for the UK is at about 40%, and the US is much lower than this – a clear number is not yet defined, but things are definitely way, way worse.
How did they get to this impressive rate? The answer is as surprising as it is simple: financial incentives for residents that are tied to landfill reduction. Stefan Weiss, on of Neustadt an der Weinstrasse’s waste managers in an interview with The Guardian:
“It’s all about providing financial incentives and education. We don’t charge citizens anything for the recycled waste they leave out. And the less waste you put out for incineration – we’ve had no landfill in Germany since 2005 – the less you pay. Having no incentive to reduce waste is poisonous to your aims. We have a separate, visible fee that is intentionally not embedded within a local tax.”
Imagine that; you have to pay for every percent of garbage you don’t recycle. Absolutely genius ! There is also some citizen work involved however, and a lot of desire do improve things. Do you think this could work in bigger cities, or is just limited to small cities ?
This works in bigger cities in Germany as well. You always pay for real waste bins and recyclable waste is collected for free.
The only problem with bigger cities is the stupid ppl that fill the bins wrongly. In that case it won’t get collected (only manually as waste for a higher fee). If that happens repeatedly most ppl who are responsible for the house switch back to incinerated waste bins only. That’s why big cities are below 70%
So it’s not about size, amount or available technology, just about stupidity and laziness.