For around two decades in Germany.....there's been an 'extra' trash can available to the general public.....no matter where you lived. It was a bio-can. You'd take your coffee grounds, your fruit and vegetables that were spoiled, your grass trimmings, your weeds, your cut shrubs, and dump them into this can. The can would be picked up weekly in spring and summer, and every other week in the winter period.
There were two general rules with the bio can. First, nothing else.....like plastic bags, regular garbage, paper, etc. Second, if you didn't sign up for the bio-can......you had to have a bio-disposal deal where you collected all your stuff and converted it over to organic material and you'd use it for your garden, your yard, or potted plants.
Last night, the German state-run TV news carried a fairly long piece.....almost fifteen minutes long....over the spiraling problem of bio-waste.
You see.....as dedicated as Germans seem to be with recycling and method-garbage rules......there are some who just don't get it. So, plastic bags are making their way into the system.
Oddly, when the garbage truck pulls up.....there's no evaluation on the contents of your can usually. Here in my own state (Hessen).....there are a handful of inspectors who go around and you might have them look at the top contents of your can once every five years. So the truck collects the bio-garbage and drives off to a processing plant. This stuff gets dumped onto a conveyer belt and a couple of lowly paid guys inspect things to a minor degree, and it gets fed into a blender of sorts. Then it all gets mixed into some dirt and resold to the public. Somewhere in the mixture.....you can figure roughly one to two percent of the contents will be plastic.
Some German farm will buy the bulk truck of bio-sod (for a cheap price) and use it on their crop land. Naturally....the plastic finds its way into the soil, and as the news folks explained.....NONE of this is good for farms or crops. Plastic contaminants, by the comments of the science guys they interviewed.....are a pretty wicked deal for farmers.
The political folks are kinda stuck now. They can't really figure any more gimmicks out other than more inspectors but that hasn't proven to really work well. They've spent millions on education and getting the public to realize what can go into the bio-can, and the results are nothing you'd brag about.
The issue? Germans now have around four or five interior garbage cans that they have to mess with. It's comical to an American to look at the amount of effort they go through......to be bio-friendly and garbage-friendly. In the middle of this mess.....is a bio-can with a plastic bag. Of the entire collection of garbage containers.....the bio-can is the worst of the worst, in terms of smell. So once a week.....they carry this crappy bag out to the bio-can and dump it. Some folks dump only the contents, and some folks dump the entire bag. I'd take a humble guess that ten-percent of the public is dumping the plastic bag entirely into the can.
More fines? Somewhere in this mix.....I expect more garbage audit folks to appear (maybe even monthly), and folks start to get assessed a hundred to two-hundred Euro in fines.....to persuade them to do the right thing. Presently, the audit guys for the most part will put a label on the can and let the customer know that their can will not be picked up this week, and they'd best empty the problem out of the can by next week or face the same issue again.
It's an odd problem. All of this was supposed to be good for the environment and good for society....as long as everyone played along and did the right thing. You'd need one-hundred percent participation and acceptance. Presently.....it just isn't going to be successful.
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