The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [136]
Packaging Done Better
So far, the most serious effort to reduce packaging waste has been undertaken in Germany. In 1991, the German government adopted a packaging ordinance, the foundation of which is the belief that the companies that design, produce, use, and profit from packaging should be held financially responsible for it—an idea known as extended producer responsibility.45 What a concept!
The ordinance requires companies to pay according to both the volume and type of packaging they use, which gives them incentive not just to reduce packaging, but also to use safer materials. A full 72 percent of bottles are required to be refillable!46 To simplify the logistics of meeting the requirements, some companies got together and set up the Duales System Deutschland (DSD). Companies pay DSD based on their packaging use, and the money is used to collect the packaging waste and safely reuse, recycle, or dispose of it. DSD is commonly called the Green Dot program because participating companies put a green dot on their packages, indicating their participation in the program.47 It looks kind of like the yin-yang symbol, which somehow seems fitting.
Prior to the ordinance, packaging waste in Germany was increasing at 2 to 4 percent each year. Then, between 1991 and 1995, their packaging waste decreased by a total of 14 percent, while during the same period packaging waste in the United States increased 13 percent. After the impressive initial reductions, the rate of further reductions slowed. Subsequently the program focused on developing efficient collection, recovery, and recycling industries, enabling recovery rates of between 60 percent and more than 90 percent for glass, paper, cardboard, packaging waste, metals, and biowaste by 2001.48
Germany’s system isn’t perfect. At the beginning, the government had to subsidize it since the infrastructure wasn’t in place to make it work smoothly. Their definition of recycling is also so broad that it is not limited to recycling a material for the same use: the majority of plastics are not mechanically recycled back into plastics but processed into synthetic crude oils and chemicals or used as a reducing agent in steel production. Inexcusably, some burning of packaging waste is allowed under the definition of “recovery” in the ordinance.49 There have been scandals in which piles of Green Dot waste have been found in dumps in developing countries, including by me. Those are all problems, yes. But at least the German government has taken a stand declaring that producers are responsible and is tackling the problem, unlike in the United States, where we’re drowning ever deeper in packaging. The German model inspired the European Union to adopt a Europe-wide directive on packaging and packaging waste in 1994.50 Again, it’s not perfect, but at least the governments are trying something to reduce packaging and are moving in the right direction, albeit slowly. And the progress that has been achieved with both these directives is evidence that the incredible amount of packaging waste in the United States is absolutely not inevitable.
Taking Out the Trash: Whose Job Is It Anyway?
In fact, that solution for packaging waste is the best solution for all forms of product waste. You see, we have a big problem when it comes to our municipal trash. The term “municipal” means that it falls within the jurisdiction of local government. Garbage management first became a function of local government (instead of individuals) between 1910 and 1930, after it became clear that there were enough people concentrated in urban settings