Waste management

Zero Waste is one of the fastest, easiest climate action strategies that everyone can implement today to immediately reduce greenhouse gas emissions (read more here).
Currently, the residual waste in Hamburg still contains about 20% paper and 14% other recyclable materials (Wertstoffe) – let’s reduce these numbers and contribute to saving resources and reducing greenhouse gas emissions! (It also contains 38% organic waste, but at the moment the university is unable to provide a separate bin for that, unfortunately.)
Avoiding waste completely is difficult, but if you follow the 5 Rs, you are on a good way to minimise it: Refuse – Reduce – Reuse (+ Repair) – Recycle – Rot (see here). Our Going Green efforts try to reduce the occasions where you might receive short-lived products or packaging. But if you are stuck with some residues after all, please help us to recycle as much of it by separating it into the different bins.

Papier (paper): including envelopes, cardboard, cigarette packets without its plastic packaging. Not for used paper napkins and tissues and greasy pizza cartons (this is residual waste) or tetra pak cartons from juice or milk (this is recyclable material).

Wertstoffe (plastic and metal/recyclable material): in Hamburg, waste that consists primarily of plastic or metal is collected together as ‘Wertstoffe’. This also includes composite packaging like coffee-to-go cups and tetra pak cartons from juice or milk. Wherever possible, the recyclable material has to be disassembled to avoid it being incinerated after all (e.g. yoghurt cups often consist of a paper sleeve, a plastic cup and an aluminium cover – please place these parts in the bins separately!).

Glas (glass): Glass is a material that can be recycled easily and many times. But to ensure a high quality, colour purity is essential. Therefore, glass has to be separated again according to its colour: white (clear) glass, brown glass and green glass (which includes all other colours as well).
Dumpsters for glass waste (e.g. for bottles that do not have a deposit) are placed throughout the city. This website helps you to find them. Just insert the street where you are, uncheck ‘Recyclinghöfe’ and ‘Papier’, and press ‘suchen’. Near our campus there are some in Binderstraße (behind the building Von-Melle-Park 8) and some on Allende Platz.

Restmüll (residual waste): Lacking a separate collection for organic waste at the university, this comprises all the rest and will be incinerated.

In Germany there are two deposit systems in place: one for reusable bottles (‘Mehrweg’). On such bottles you find the word ‘Mehrweg’ or its symbol (figure 1, symbol on the right side).

And there is a system for one-way-bottles that are collected for recycling. They always carry the Pfand symbol (figure 1, symbol on the left side). Although the one-way-plastic bottles are collected for recycling (in Germany you pay a deposit of EUR 0.25 for them), they are usually downcyled, which means that the collected material is not used to make new plastic bottles.

‘Pfand gehört daneben’ (Bottles belong next to (not into) trash containers): Since many people throw away their empty bottles instead of returning them to a shop, a campaign was initiated to encourage people to leave their bottles next to trash cans.
This is not only more sustainable (the bottles can then be recycled more easily) but it can also be seen as an act of solidarity, since people who need the deposit money to master everyday life can pick up the bottles without having to search the trash cans. So always remember: bottles do not belong into trash cans!
To support the ‘Pfand gehört daneben’ (bottles belong next to (not into) trash containers) initiative, students of Universität Hamburg launched a project to collect empty bottles: They put up old beer crates next to trash containers on campus for people to easily discard and pick up used bottles. There are already ten of these collecting points installed. Look out for these points on campus and leave your ‘Pfand’ bottles there.

Bottled water uses fossil fuels, contributes to global warming and causes pollution.
Refilling your bottle instead of drinking bottled water saves 150-300 g CO2-equivalents per litre (depending on where in Germany the source is). If all ECER participants refill their bottles and drink the recommended 2 litres per day, this saves 942 – 1884 kg of CO2-equivalents daily.

Even though plastic bottles can be recycled, the recycled material is seldom used to make new plastic bottles, as virgin material is cheap and easier to handle. Only 7.8 % of the recycled material has a quality similar to virgin material. This makes up for only 2.8% of the plastic used for producing new goods in Germany (s. Plastikatlas 2019, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung/BUND). If you decide to buy a bottled drink after all, reusable bottles are the greener option.