Indeed Germany has a system for garbage classification since 1904. In 2014 a study on behalf of the German Association of consumer organizations with about 1000 interviewees found out, that nearly everybody in Germany separates garbage, but just about one third does it accurately.
When I was in primary school, our whole school spent one week to the topic "waste". I remember we went to the forest and collected plastic. In a small group we brought some stuff our families didn?t need anymore and built a dollhouse with those materials. On one day our teacher introduced the German waste classification system: A well-assorted household has three dustbins. One for the recyclable fraction like special marked plastic, beverage cartons or packing bag. One for bio-waste like kitchen slops or green waste which can be used as fertilizer for private garden or agriculture. And the third for residual waste, which includes all substances which are non-recyclable and don?t have any harmful substances. This is the right place for ash, used vacuum cleaner bags, fag butts or leather. Plastic with-out the above-named special mark belong to this dustbin as well, because it can?t be recycled. For the waste of all those dustbins every house has some bigger dustbins to collect the occupants whole waste of about one week. After that time garbage collectors empty the house bins.
German households are also demanded to classify paper. In some areas every house has a dustbin for paper, I have to take it to a paper container which is public available in my street. Be-side the paper container are some bins for waste glass. This glass just includes bottles, jam jars and something like that, it?s not al-lowed to throw drinking glass, light bulbs or window glass in-side. The glass is color-sorted into white, brown and green glass, so it can be melted and used for new uncolored bottles and jars. Classifying bottles is a complicated topic in Germany. There are not only those glass bottles which can get melted, there are also two more different kinds of bottles which are clas-sified in Germany - returnable and non-returnable.
The classification of recyclable waste, paper, bottles, cloth and batteries is totally integrated in my life, because I see it as a very convenient and easy way of classification.
Indeed Germany has a system for garbage classification since 1904. In 2014 a study on behalf of the German Associa-tion of consumer organizations with about 1000 interviewees found out, that nearly everybody in Germany separates garbage, but just about one third does it accurately.
Beside the personal classification of garbage, there is the garbage classification at public places. At most public places, nor-mal streets, trains and subways exist dustbins, but just a few namely those at railway stations are classifying the waste, in the others it?s getting mixed. Especially on those places a special phenomenon can be observed: since an increase and expansion of the pledge for bottles and beverage cans many people are collecting bottles from the streets or even fish for it in public dustbins to get some money. However, the important point is, that valuable resources can be recycled and it?s a little contribu-tion for environment protection.