Going Green...

I knew prior to moving here that Germans took their recycling seriously...but I honestly had no idea what was in store for me!! It's been quite the learning process, and one that's even involved an angry store owner showing up at our house threatening to call the police on me. Oops!!

So, here's the ugly truth. I've never been one to recycle much. There, I said it. Chris is WAY better at it than me, but taking the extra step to sort our garbage was just too much of an "inconvenience" for me. I know, I know...shame on me. I have to laugh at myself now and roll my eyes, because seriously I didn't know how good I had it or how EASY it was made for me back home. #spoiledAmerican

This piece of paper quickly became our best friend:

We have three containers that are picked up from the house on designated garbage days.
One for actual garbage/trash. One for biodegradable things (basically all the food scraps) and one large container for paper/cardboard.

The trash and bio containers are picked up on alternate weeks (yeah, garbage pick up every.other.week. AND only one SMALL container!!) and the big container for paper and cardboard is picked up once a month. One big difference from back home is that any and all items must fit in the actual container being picked up. No overflow items, anything else must be taken to the dump or recycling center.

So in the house we have a 5 station sorting system.

These baskets are in a drawer in the kitchen to the right of the sink. One is for paper/cardboard products, the middle one is for containers, wraps, basically all packaging. And the third one is for glass bottles and returnables that have a deposit and need to be returned to the store. 

This is under the sink for garbage and BIO. The BIO is in front and there are special bags you buy from the grocery store to put these items in.

The recycling center (Werstoffhof) is pretty intimidating...I wanted to take a bunch of pictures and video, but people mean business and have a job to do when they're there...it's not a fun playground! And since my German is still pretty awful I'm easily intimidated and afraid of getting in trouble! haha!! There are huge dumpsters lining the perimeter to allow people to drop off everything they need to recycle and place in the appropriate bin.

This is also where I get these special green bags that we use to put all of our packaging in:

Check out that mountain of packaging!!

I have the sweetest little helpers

There are also these recycling bins lined up in tons of places that you can drop off stuff like cardboard and glass bottles (they're sorted by color: green, brown, clear) These are super convenient, because the Werstoffhof has pretty limited hours so being able to just drive up to one of these little spots and drop off items makes it much easier!

We still make a weekly trip to the Werstoffhof though.

So, let me tell you the {now} funny story of how I almost had the police called on me within our first few weeks of living here...like I had said, if items don't fit in your allotted containers at your house you have to take care of them on your own, you can't just put everything at the end of the driveway on garbage day. SO, we had a TON of boxes from IKEA that we needed to recycle and people kept telling me about this recycling center. Well, I thought I found it...it had the row of recycling bins lined up and then on the side of the building were these tall blue crates filled with broken down cardboard so I thought, BINGO! Found it...I've totally got this Germany recycling thing figured out. So I unloaded the car and drove off..pretty proud of myself. 

Or not....

The next day I got a text message from our (angel) relocation agent asking me for specifics on where I dropped off our boxes. Ummmmm....uh-oh. 

The owner of the store was furious...he found our address on the boxes, came to the house looking for answers. When we weren't there (thank goodness, because with the language barrier I doubt it would have gone very well!) Our wonderful neighbors were though and were kind enough to explain to him that we were American and had just moved and it was clearly a mistake. He wasn't satisfied though, so he then found out who owned the house and called our landlords and demanded answers or said he would call the police!!! Our landlords called our relocation agent who then reached out to us to find out what happened and she was fortunetly able to get ahold of the store owner, explain everything and smooth it all over. 

And then Chris picked up every last box on his way home from work. My hero. 

So, there you have it. Recycling in Deutschland. I'll never take garbage/recycling pick up for granted again!!