What happened now however has gone too far. The government expects you to collect no less than 17 different kinds of waste on your premises and place them in various containers ready for pickup
Muellkultur (Waste culture)
Germany is truly into waste. No joke. After having returned to the country after 10 years of absence I am surprised to find how much. If you live in Singapore or in the US, buildings often have a waste chute into which one just drops any kind of waste and never worries about it again.
Germany on the other side cares about it's waste. It's not even called "waste" anymore. It's called "Wertstoff" (item of worth). The government expects you to separate waste manually in your home. Not that I had ambitions to become a waste picker but, then again, to a degree this makes sense (like separating toxic waste from regular waste).
  | Regular waste (which does not fit into any of the below) |
| Organic Waste |
| Recyclable plastics |
| Paper |
| White bottles |
| Brown bottles |
| Green bottles |
| Bulky items |
| Batteries |
| Toxic waste |
| Paint and colors |
| Tree branches and shrubs |
| Reusable plastic bottles |
| Reusable glass bottles |
| Disposable plastic bottles for which a deposit was payed |
| Motor oil |
| Car and motorcycle batteries (deposit) |
If you thought that was bad, check out this paper here, published by a village administration. Basically it is a waste disposal manual. If you do not understand the language, you would never believe this.
It says that, if you used disposable (carton) dishes for your childs birthday party, they may never go to the paper bin although they are made of paper (that's to confuse the customer). If they are clean, they may go to the yellow bin which collects recyclable plastics. If they have some sticky food rest attached (ketchup?) they need to go to the gray bin (for general waste).
What is wrong with this people? I truly understand that we need to take care of the environment. However, I do not have space or time to run a recycling factory on the side. One of us could easily run this as a fulltime job.
I want my trash chute back!