A few nights ago I was out with a good friend of mine and she mentioned my post about Recycling in Japan, in which I wrote about having washed out yogurt cups before putting them in the yellow trash bag in Germany. She said she was still doing that and was wondering about the regulations.
Clean trash for the sack does not justify the amount of water being wasted. Back in ’95 I was told to only deposit clean plastic trash, but somewhere down the line I stopped it. I saw people depositing all kinds of trash, e.g., flower posts with remaining soil in it, newspapers, regular waste, etc. into the yellow container. I figured my washed one-way plastic containers, cups, etc., would not make a difference.
This morning I called city hall’s environmental hot line and inquired about this issue. The gentleman was very helpful and even called me back with confirmed information.
The proper way – mind you, we are in Germany – is to discard plastic and aluminum in a grobsauber way, which means roughly cleaned. Food remnants should be scraped out, but a water rinse is not needed.
Water is a very precious commodity, and we should try our best to avoid global water shortage. I will always remember reading somewhere years ago that the next world war – if at all – would not be centered around power nor oil, but on water.
Considering that the cost of your water bill is comprised of 1/3 clean water and 2/3 for waste water, we should rethink our habitual ways.
Modern sorting machines have made the yellow plastic recycling bag obsolete anyway. But there is a lot of money involved in this dirty cleaning business.
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