Word: trashings
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When Germany created the world's most advanced rubbish-reclamation system last year, Environment Minister Klaus Topfer proudly declared, "When it comes to recycling, we Germans are world champions." In fact, they are too good. Householders participating in the Green Dot program are discarding recyclable trash -- which features a special green trademark -- at such a prodigious rate that the whole system is in danger of breaking down...
...tons of packaging materials bearing the green symbol of recyclability have piled up in warehouses, farm fields and abandoned aircraft hangers from Hamburg to Augsburg. Much more has been shipped abroad, some of it as far away as Indonesia, helping Germany become the globe's biggest exporter of trash. "This system has made us world-class litterbugs," says Norbert Barth, a spokesman for the environmentalist Greens party. "It is a waste-export system, not a waste-recycling system...
...venture operates alongside conventional collection services. Bright orange city trucks service regular rubbish bins, while purple DSD vehicles empty yellow containers set aside for trash -- mainly plastics and metals -- bearing the Green Dot, which signifies that the owner has paid DSD to recycle (average bill per package: 25 cents...
Right now, 95% of German households participate in the program, generating 400,000 tons of sorted trash annually. But DSD can recycle little more than 125,000 tons a year. Meanwhile, because of the backlog and the failure of many participating companies to pay their full dues, DSD has plunged $500 million into debt. Much of the money is owed to local governments for collection and storage of refuse; Frankfurt and Stuttgart are threatening to sue DSD or quit the program...
...about to outlaw offshore oil drilling. In fact, all he wants to change is the way the government buys its stationery, all $20 billion of it. The President plans this week to order federal agencies to purchase only paper with at least 20% of the content made from recycled trash by 1994. He wants the recycled content to be 30% by 1998. Allen Hershkowitz, recycling chief of the Natural Resources Defense Council, hails the move as "the most important decision in recycling history...