Taking Out the Trash: The Easy Green Point

The picture doesn’t say a thousand words, until you know that I am holding 6 weeks of trash for two people in my hand. That’s the honest to goodness truth. This is 6 weeks of trash for Rachel and I, and I find that rather amazing.
I think back to my little place in Iowa where I had a trash can in my garage that came up to my waist. It was the smallest trash can that I could get from the sanitation service, and they expected me to fill it every week – at least they came to pick it up that often. And I guess I was a pretty good customer for the sanitation service.
So how is it that we are throwing out so much less in Germany? Well it’s not that we’re necessarily throwing out that much less, it’s just where it is going.
In Germany “garbage” gets divided into 5 groups: Bio Waste, Paper, Glass, The Green Point, and Trash. Bio Waste is coffee grounds, tea bags, moldy bread, and banana peels. Paper is anything made out of any kind of paper; newspaper, magazines, old envelopes, boxes and egg cartons – all in the same container. Glass is everything made of glass, subdivided into brown, green and clear glass. “Trash” is anything that doesn’t fit into one of the other categories.
The reason that there is so little “trash” is because of the 4th group, “The Green Point.” Into this group goes all packaging: tin cans, bottle caps, styrofoam, grocery bags, the package that the sausages came in, empty milk carton, etc. It all goes in the same container. How is this possible? I have no idea, but I know it all gets reused.
That’s the brilliance of the whole system – it’s simple, effortless, and it works even for people who don’t understand how it works. I recycled a little here and a little there in the U.S., but I didn’t recycle nearly as much, because it was complicated; it took effort. (In some places it even costs extra!) The system here isn’t complicated. I don’t have to “take” my recycling anywhere. Everything is right out in front of the building. One day I may take out paper, the next the Green Point, another day the glass. And about every 6 weeks, I take out the trash. It’s simple and accessible, and you can find it everywhere: in front of every building, in every airport, on every platform of every train station.
We’re wasting perhaps 1/10 of what we used to. I have no idea how it works, but I like it. I don’t feel like I have to be an environmental activist to be environmentally conscious (I can be environmentally unconscious and still be environmentally conscious!). The Green Point – made easy for the ignorant and environmentally unambitious common man.