'Packaging a revolution.' (revolutionary recycling in Germany)

World Watch reported last year on Germany's revolutionary--though imperfect--efforts to make manufacturers responsible for the collection and recycling of their packaging after it is discarded by customers.

At that time, the German system faced a precarious financial situation generated by its original fee structure. Initially, manufacturers were charged a weight-based fee for the packaging materials they used (the fees are to cover the cost of collecting and recycling the packaging). Although the system was able to find recycling markets for paperboard and glass, it soon ended up with a glut of plastics and composites, which are much harder to recycle. So it moved to a sliding fee scale, based on material types, rather than just weight, charging manufacturers more for plastic and composites than for paperboard and glass. This October, the fees will be further differentiated so that a ton of plastic will cost almost 20 times as much as a ton of glass.

As a result of the shift to a more accurate fee structure, Germany's system is now on more solid financial footing. The total amount of packaging in Germany decreased by 4 percent in 1993, from 12.3 million tons to 11.8 million.

More important, perhaps, is the shift in the types of material used for packaging in Germany. Plastic has lost one-third of its market share to paperboard and glass, according to Joachim Spangenberg, researcher at the German government's Wuppertal Institut. For every ton of plastic sold for packaging in Germany now, two-thirds of the cost stems from its collection and recycling fee and only one-third is generated by the plastic itself.

Although the shift to packaging that is easy to re-use or recycle is incomplete, Germany is seeing "the first indication of what it would mean if prices told the ecological truth," says Spangenberg.

As Germany continues to adjust its system, the European Union is working toward common recycling standards for its 12 member countries. Such legislation is important because there has been some tension between member nations over various packaging schemes. The German system, for example, although effective in collecting large amounts of packaging materials, flooded the recycleables market--lowering the price for recycleables elsewhere in Europe.

The legislation sets both minimum and maximum targets for materials collection and recycling--it includes maximum limits because the current market can only use so much recycled material. The European Union legislation does offer an exemption to the maximum if countries are able to prove that they have enough domestic recycling capacity to collect and use a higher percentage of materials.