<
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/oct/18/the-zero-waste-city-what-kiel-in-germany-can-teach-the-world>
"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
The hair that drops in clumps on the floors of some salons in Kiel, a port city
in northern Germany, is swept up to be turned into fabrics that filter oil from
water. Parents who want to buy their children cloth nappies instead of
disposable ones can apply for grants of up to €200 from the local authorities.
At the city’s biggest festival last year, the organisers got rid of single-use
cutlery and replaced it with a deposit system.
Germany is famed as a world leader in recycling – and Kiel, as I found out
during a visit this summer, has some of the most weird and workable plans in
the country to deal with its trash. It is the first German city to be declared
“zero waste” by the environmental campaign group Zero Waste Europe. The
certificate does not mean it has already stopped throwing things away – far
from it – but rather that it has a concrete plan for how to do better.
“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. “You have to keep thinking further … You cannot stay still.”
Germany has a complicated relationship with waste. Despite its status as a
world leader in recycling, Europe’s biggest economy is also one of its
dirtiest. In 2021, the average German generated 646kg of waste, while the
average EU citizen generated 530kg. Only in four EU countries – Austria,
Luxembourg, Denmark and Belgium – did people throw away more.
Dino Klösen, a manager at Kiel’s waste management company ABK, says trends in
the country’s consumption can be seen in its bins. Paper recycling bins that
would have once been full of newspapers are now bursting with cardboard from
delivery packages. “The weight of paper waste has dropped but the volume keeps
rising from online shopping,” he says.
Awash with waste, cities like Kiel are exploring ways to throw away less and
recycle more of what it does chuck. The city council has announced projects
ranging from a ban on single-use items in public institutions, to installing
more public drinking fountains, to teaching schoolchildren about waste. It is
also encouraging people to make simple changes to their behaviour such as using
solid bars of soap instead of buying plastic bottles of the stuff."
Via
What Could Go Right? October 26, 2023:
https://theprogressnetwork.org/brazil-amazon-deforestation-slowing/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
