The Waste Management Concept

"Z’Freiburg in de Stadt/sufer isch’s un glatt" [A German rhyme saying: In Freiburg’s city, it’s clean and pretty], rhymed Johann Peter Hebel over two-hundred years ago. Nowadays, Freiburg’s citizens are doing their best to keep it that way. Recycling of paper, plastics, organic material has been wholeheartedly taken onboard by those living here to the extent that the volume of garbage per capita is markedly below state and national average.

Refundable Container Concept and Financial Incentives

The city itself sets a good example by using paper, of which approximately 80 percent has been recycled. A recycling concept was introduced in 1991, which was supported across all sectors, with even the SC Freiburg soccer team agreeing to support the initiative. Waste avoidance is rewarded by a system of incentives: benefits for the use of textile diapers, discounts for collective waste disposal pooling and for people who compost their own green wastes.

Treatment of Non-Recyclable Wastes

Since 2005, non-recyclable waste from the region is incinerated at a plant in the Industrial Park Breisgau, located 20km south of Freiburg. The plant practices waste disposal safety by maintaining high environmental standards. It supplies energy to 25,000 households. Energy generated from the fermentation of bio-organic wastes covers one percent of Freiburg’s energy demand.

Waste Consulting and Teaching

The waste disposal management concept of 2008 defines "avoidance before recycling before depositing" as the future strategy. Avoidance and waste separation show us the way out of the "throwaway" society, towards more informed and sustainable consumer behaviour. Since 1994, Freiburg’s partially privatised waste disposal and sanitation company (ASF) has been organising, in co-operation with schools and Freiburg’s Eco-Station, courses and guided tours, a "Garbage Theatre" for elementary school children, competitions and teaching units, such as "Ideas, not Waste" or "Children and the Agenda 21".