The Recycling Champion Germany? Enormous costs and questionable ecological effects

Germany seems to be one of the leading nations in solid waste management, especially in the case of packaging waste. Success stories about the permanent increase of recycling strengthen this impression. However, enormous costs and questionable ecological effects are the result of the German Packaging Ordinance and the recovery organization "Duales System Deutschland" (DSD).

This experiment is still conducted at a high expense for industry and consumers - totally more than DM 9 billion per year. The reasons for the cost situation are the mandate for a nationwide collection of all packaging materials at the household level and the setting of high recycling quotas. The consequence is an enormous expenditure of logistic and sorting. Ignoring economic (and ecological) aspects, the collection of the very last milk carton in every small village leads to increasing costs.

Analyses of the German Institute for Applied Innovation Research (IAI) show, that a similar progress on reduction and recycling of packaging could have been realized even without a Packaging Ordinance and the Dual System, but with lower costs.

On the one hand, the firms` strictly enforced efforts to save material costs have led to successful reductions of packaging material in the last decades without a Packaging Ordinance and this is still going on. On the other hand, 2.5 million tons were already collected by existing systems prior to implementation of the Dual System. According to our studies this recycling amount would continue to increase up to at least 3.7 million tons without the Dual System. Thus, a quantity not exceeding 2 million tons is the "ecological effect" of the Dual System. This means: Every ton additionally collected by the Dual System burden the affected companies and consumers with an average of DM 4,400. In contrast to that the incineration costs lie between DM 500 and DM 800 per ton. These questionable effects were purchased at the expense of monopolistic structures in the waste management sector and a consumer who feels insecure, because he is encircled by different collection systems.

The Packaging Ordinance as an example of isolated product take-back legislation demonstrates, that a fragmentary solid waste management approach - based more on ideology than on facts - leads to enormous costs and ecological questionable effects. To change this situation a need for an integrated solid waste management approach exists, based on evaluations of the economic, environmental and social effects of different waste management options for the occurring materials.