Amendment of the waste management statutes

The city council adopted new waste management bylaws at its May meeting. The last amendment was made in 2016, in which the municipality obliges its citizens to avoid and separate waste.

Sharing residual waste garbage cans

The amount of waste should be kept as low as possible. Waste should be

• avoided
• reused
• recycled and
• otherwise recycled.

The city has the task of advising citizens, businesses and other economic and public institutions on the possibilities of avoiding, recycling and disposing of waste.

What is new, for example, is that

• two neighboring property owners share a residual waste garbage can with separate recycling containers or
• several people with a connection obligation can share a residual waste garbage can and recycling bin.

Use of plastic waste bags no longer permitted

The issue of compostable organic waste bags is also new. In future, the use of plastic waste bags will no longer be permitted, even if they are labeled as compostable. The reason: compostable organic waste bags do decompose, but far too slowly for the composting plants. As a result, these small-sized flat films have to be separated out in the composting plant, which is very laborious and costly. In addition, they are almost impossible to separate completely. Furthermore, they are often indistinguishable from normal plastic bags. This inadmissibly increases the proportion of foreign matter in biowaste.

The complete version of the waste management regulations will be published in the official gazette "Die amtlichen Seiten", issue no. 11 of May 31. It can be accessed online at www.erlangen.de/das.