When it comes to recycling, Kiel has pulled ahead of the crowd, with its ban on single-use items, plans for leftover meals and innovative ideas for discarded human hair
“It’s one step in the right direction,” says Bettina Aust – a Green party politician who was elected president of Kiel city council in June – over a glass of juice made from apples that had been saved from landing in a supermarket bin.
Over time, Germans have grown accustomed to sorting their trash, which has been a legal requirement since 2015 and is made easier by a wide range of bins in public spaces and apartment blocks.
The apathy towards recycling in the UK is strong enough that prime minister Rishi Sunak recently included sorting your rubbish into “seven different bins” in a list of environmental proposals he said he would stop from becoming policy.
The government passed a law to push clean-up costs on to manufacturers and introduced a “green dot” symbol on packaging to show that its maker was paying a fee to collect, sort and recover the waste.
Institutions and businesses need to improve but small behavioural changes can go a long way, says Moritz Dietsch, co-founder of the ResteRitter, a startup in Kiel that “rescues’’ fruit and vegetables that are about to be thrown out and makes marmalade and chutney from them.
In one sense, Germany’s obsession with sorting rubbish shows how millions of individual choices, taken daily in homes and workplaces across the country, can help protect the planet from harmful pollutants.
The original article contains 2,151 words, the summary contains 228 words. Saved 89%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !zerowaste@lemmy.ml
Being “zero waste” means that we adopt steps towards reducing personal waste and minimizing our environmental impact.
Our community places a major focus on the 5 R’s: refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, and rot. We practice this by reducing consumption, choosing reusable goods, recycling, composting, and helping each other improve.
We also recognize excess CO₂, other GHG emissions, and general resource usage as waste.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“It’s one step in the right direction,” says Bettina Aust – a Green party politician who was elected president of Kiel city council in June – over a glass of juice made from apples that had been saved from landing in a supermarket bin.
Over time, Germans have grown accustomed to sorting their trash, which has been a legal requirement since 2015 and is made easier by a wide range of bins in public spaces and apartment blocks.
The apathy towards recycling in the UK is strong enough that prime minister Rishi Sunak recently included sorting your rubbish into “seven different bins” in a list of environmental proposals he said he would stop from becoming policy.
The government passed a law to push clean-up costs on to manufacturers and introduced a “green dot” symbol on packaging to show that its maker was paying a fee to collect, sort and recover the waste.
Institutions and businesses need to improve but small behavioural changes can go a long way, says Moritz Dietsch, co-founder of the ResteRitter, a startup in Kiel that “rescues’’ fruit and vegetables that are about to be thrown out and makes marmalade and chutney from them.
In one sense, Germany’s obsession with sorting rubbish shows how millions of individual choices, taken daily in homes and workplaces across the country, can help protect the planet from harmful pollutants.
The original article contains 2,151 words, the summary contains 228 words. Saved 89%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!