Germany tells makers of sources of litter to pay for future garbage cleaning
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Germany’s Environment Minister Svenja Schulze and the country’s 1,500 local body utilities insisted Thursday the future bills should be paid by suppliers whose throwaways end up quickly littering the landscape or in communal trash bins.
It was “only fair, that we disburden citizens and in turn ask the one-way manufacturers to front up on costs,” Schulze told a Berlin press briefing.
In reaction, Germany’s BVE foodstuffs federation acknowledged the EU’s waste recycling strategy, including a 2019 directive against single-use plastics, but said it was “no free ticket” for local bodies to then present “extensive” financial demands.
Michael Ebling, who is president of the German Association of Local Utilities (VKU) and mayor of the city of Mainz, said the association’s study showed that one-way plastics made up a fifth of Germany’s total waste collected on streets and in parks.
Local bodies’ total clean-up bill was €700 million ($834 million). Cigarette butt removal cost €225 and one-way plastic cups €120 million, found the VKU.
Minister Schulze said that, by summer 2021, plastic plates, single-use cutlery, plastic straws and Styropor cups should vanish from Germany’s parks.
And, the solution was not replacing plastic with paper receptacles, Schulze said. “The alternative must be recycling.”
Revenues from manufacturers should enable local bodies to “hire more personnel, acquire new sweeping machines or extra waste paper bins and ashtrays,” she added, referring to the directive awaiting parliament transposition into German law.
