Recycling the German Way

Sorry I have been a slacker on the blog, but I started class again for my MBA, and I am in language school as you know...little busy. Then last night we went to dinner in Bad Durkheim with people from John Deere that were visiting from the US. We had dinner in a giant wine barrel, it was really cool and the food was fantastic!
On to recycling
You quickly find out how serious the German people are about recycling as it is mandatory and quite complicated until you get the ang of it. I am not sure if you are commiting a crime in terms of the law, but you will certainly be looked down upon if you are seen putting too much in the Restmull (trash). This is especially true when you live an apartment buiding with two other families and have to share.
I kind of already knew about the recycling thing as, Uli our ex-pat relocation specialist from the company, told us that Germans take energy and environment to the next level. And he was serious as most Germans are...he even told us what to set out radiators on in the winter to conserve energy. That will be a whole other post!
Any way I thought I would give you a quick peak at my recycling life in Germany. Quick review...I grew up in a house where we recycled, and even had a compost pile when we had a garden. My mother has taken it a little further since we have left, trying to make their lives as green as possible...so I am not a stranger when it comes to this subject. Also, in the US TJ and I were big recyclers, or at least we thought we were until we got here. We put all of our recyclables in the blue bin and put it out each week, as most do in the QC. Here it is quite different. First, instead of one bin, we have three outside, another large one in the neighborhood, and der Gelbe Sak. Yep, 5 total. It is very hard to explain so I have included pictures.

The first pix is der Gelbe Sak. It means the yellow bag. The yellow bag contains all things plastic and aluminum. And I mean everything in this category! Wrappers of all kinds, used tin foil, as well as the average plastic bottle or pop can. You pick these up at the local market and they are free of charge.

There is also paper/cardboard, a trash (restmull), and a bio trash that is all things organic and natural that break down. This might include yard waste, food scraps, coffee, etc. And food srap makes up a lot as there are not garbage disposals. And yes these are for all three families that live in the building, if you can believe it.

In each neighborhood there are large glass recycling bins as well for anything you want to get rid of that is glass. The bins are seperated into brown, green, and white/clear. This is kind of a pain as you cannot just take each one outside when you want to get rid of it like you can with the others.

In our house, we have many containers for all five of these. The little one in the middle is home to paper and another compartment for bio. Of course, I wish I could build cabinets around the containers and make it less ugly, but I was told by someone (TJ) that I just need to deal with it and it is not permanent. Ugly or not I am glad to help out the Earth! And yes if you come to visit you will also need to recycle as it is the German way!
I was also informed by our neighbor that the city of Mannheim takes large items twice a year, and those that can be recycled are, and those that are simply trash are disposed of properly. I certainly entertain this as all of our cardboard from the move is in the cellar.

I will not bore you with the German lesson today as I spent 4.5 hours discussing sentence fragmentation. The good news is that we only had to spend one day on it! The bad news is that the sentence here is not the same as the sentence in the US, but is similar to Spanish.

Auf Wiedersehen