Has Germany hit the jackpot of recycling? The jury’s still out
At a drinks retailer on the outskirts of Hamburg, a father holds up his three-year-old son to help him push an empty plastic water bottle into a hole on a large grey machine. With a whirring sound, the apparatus pulls the bottle out of the child’s hand, juggles it on an assembly line to scan the barcode, then sucks the container even deeper into its belly and eventually shreds it with a satisfying crunch. “Jackpot!” says the boy, beaming with glee as the machine spits back a 25-cent voucher. Next in line, a man carrying a bin bag brimming with plastic bottles cannot quite feel a similar joy in recycling. “To be honest, I think it’s a slog,” says Şükrü Çal, 41. “Somehow the supermarkets have found a way of making us clear up after them.” With its reputation as a recycling world champion, Germany is seen by many as the inspiration behind Britain’s new deposit return scheme (DRS) for bottles and cans, which was announced this week. However, 15 years after its introduction, views still vary on whether the scheme is a case of bottle half-empty or bottle half-full.
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on Apr 1 2018. Filed under News Worldwide.
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