Recycling bins for glass bottles — both clear and colored — in Potsdam, Germany. Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times
Thanks to the New York Times for reminding us who’s who in the world of recycling:
Germany Gleefully Leads List of World’s Top Recyclers
By
The praise from a German friend was the first sign that I had gone native.
“You see?” he said to his American wife, pointing to the sink where, without thinking, I was rinsing out the plastic yogurt cup I’d just emptied, unwrapping its cardboard sleeve and separating the foil from the lip of the container. “That is how to recycle!”
What may sound like a lot of extra fuss over trash has become second nature among Germans, the world’s recycling champions.
Black bins are for reserved for general waste, blue for paper, yellow for plastic and brown for composting. Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germans happily sort 65 percent of their waste into an array of color-coded bins to be collected for reuse or incineration. South Koreans come in second, recycling 59 percent of their refuse. The United States recycles 35 percent; that’s only slightly above the average for the developed countries that belong to the organization, but it is miles ahead of Turkey, where 99 percent of all trash ends up in a landfill.
Of course, even in Germany, you’ll find recycling rebels. Instead of sorting, they just throw it all in a big can marked General Waste, and they scoff at their dutiful neighbors who lug out trash in separate bags bound for color-coded bins.
Plastics and packaging are supposed to go in the yellow container; the blue one is for paper and cardboard. Glass waste gets two bins: white for the clear stuff, and green for colored glass…
Read the whole story here.
Organikos 