"World-Class Litterbugs"

By James O. Jackson/Bonn

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.

Something like 100,000 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."

It all started out as a good, green idea. In 1991, 600 private firms, ranging from chemical producers to grocery chains, first formed a nonprofit venture, Duales System Deutschland, to help comply with new laws that make companies responsible for the recovery and recycling of all packaging materials. Ultimately, the legislation envisions recycling all manufactured products, including computers, refrigerators, clothing, even entire automobiles.

The DSD 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.

Opponents are scathing in their criticism of the well-intentioned effort. "The designers of this system should have known that most people would observe it," says Volrad Wolny, a waste-management expert at Eco-Institute, an environmental watchdog organization. "Ecological awareness in Germany is very high." He says DSD executives gave guarantees they knew could not be met. "They knew they did not have the technology in place." Wolny and others want to compel producers to cut plastic packaging by up to 50%. And the Greens, meanwhile, feel the Green Dot gives their party a bad name. They would like to banish the misleading symbol altogether.