What kind of history has Germany gone through in its century-long history of garbage sorting?

While the citizens of Shanghai are busy with the domestic waste management regulations that will be implemented on July 1, the Germans, who are always known for their strict discipline, have been carefully implementing waste classification for nearly 30 years. The Germans, who have considerable experience in formulating rules and regulations, obviously want to challenge difficult classification operations. What kind of history has Germany gone through in its century-long history of garbage sorting?

At the beginning of the 20th century, the German Empire, which had just been unified for more than thirty years, was experiencing rapid industrialization and population explosion. In Berlin, the capital, a large influx of industrial workers has made the city prosperous, but it has also brought about a big problem: a lot of garbage.

At that time, city managers represented by the Juncker landowners gave three solutions: landfill, incineration and classification and reuse.

The odor caused by burning garbage and the existence of high-quality coal mines in the Ruhr area made the waste incineration plan quickly rejected. The garbage classification scheme was officially piloted in Berlin's Charlottenburg district in 1907.

However, even if there were only three major categories of garbage classification at that time, it could not avoid that the pilot was ultimately aborted due to factors such as lack of understanding and support from residents, lack of financial subsidies, and the inability to profit from garbage recycling. It was widely believed at the time that only maids sorted garbage.

Since then, the garbage classification scheme has been completely forgotten, and landfills and even garbage mountains have become the default option for Berliners to deal with garbage. Today, the landfill has been transformed into the 87-meter-high Neuer Hahneberg, and has even become a good place for outdoor sports enthusiasts to train paragliders.

The concept of garbage sorting was revived again during the Third Reich. Nazi Germany, which was in wartime economic mode, once called for "all-round reuse of garbage" in the form of political slogans. Among them, the classification of metal waste, waste rubber, plastics and other petrochemical products was most effective.

With the fall of the Third Reich, this period of history was quickly forgotten. For the second time, the concept of garbage classification has been thrown into the dustbin of history. Due to political considerations, even today no one is willing to acknowledge the Nazi Party's achievements in the field of waste classification and utilization.

In the 1950s and 1960s, with the outbreak of the Rhineland economic miracle, Germany, which was in desperate need of improvement, embarked on the road to rapid recovery. The Germans, who have endured 20 years of hard life, have become increasingly rich. They even regard complicated product packaging or the amount of packaging waste as targets for comparison.

All this finally came to a turning point during the energy crisis of the 1970s.

In 1973, the Club of Rome, a private academic group, released the famous report "The Limits to Growth", proposing that natural resources are limited. This knowledge began to spread rapidly among the people. The Green Party movement, which began to flourish at the same time, gradually implanted this concept into the thinking of Germans.

At this time, a large number of Germans have begun to voluntarily recycle garbage. The voluntary classification of garbage has even become a footnote to the zeitgeist of that generation of Germans.

By the 1980s, waste glass and paper recycling bins had begun to be placed on a large scale in various residential areas in Germany. Although garbage classification was still based on individual voluntariness at that time, the benefits brought by garbage classification, recycling and reuse and valuable secondary raw materials made garbage classification gain unanimous support from the public and the industry.

What is interesting is that the West German government at that time never revealed any legislative plans regarding garbage classification. After all, its poor neighbor East Germany has always been willing to import plastic waste from West Germany in exchange for valuable West German foreign currency.

In 1990, East Germany merged with West Germany. The German government, which lost its export market for plastic waste, quickly passed the Packaging Regulation. This regulation is not only the prototype of the current German garbage classification system, but also declares that the concept of garbage classification has finally ushered in its third revival in Germany.

So, after more than a hundred years of ups and downs, has the German garbage classification system been perfected?

The answer is still no.

According to a report by Germany's Die Zeit, the "misplacement rate" of classified trash cans in large cities in Germany is as high as 40%, and the misplacement rate of other types of garbage used as snake oil is as high as 60%. Although detailed garbage classification lists can be obtained for free online and at city halls, obviously not everyone is willing to check such things as "What kind of garbage does used diapers belong to" or "Does cat litter belong to other types of garbage?" Trivial questions.

In 2015, Germany's "Circular Economy Act" officially came into effect, clearly classifying garbage classification as a citizen's obligation, and those who refuse to perform will be fined ranging from 30 euros to 5,000 euros. ?

If you throw an unfinished yogurt box into a yellow trash can, this is an "ordinary misthrowing"; but if you throw a plastic toilet plug into a yellow trash can, you will face a fine. "Deliberate miscast", because this move was obviously an irresponsible act made after some thought.