Organic waste garbage cans with plastic bags are left standing

A quarter of a year has passed since then. Many trailers and conversations later, the Stadtservice of Stadtwerke, which is responsible for waste disposal, is getting serious from the first of November: in the next stage, garbage cans that have repeatedly attracted attention due to incorrect filling will no longer be emptied and will remain full. They will then be given a red tag indicating the repeated incorrect filling and also naming the incorrect contents. Those affected then have the choice of re-sorting the contents or requesting a special emptying for a fee.

"We very much hope that we won't have to leave too many garbage cans standing and that people will see reason," says city treasurer and responsible department head Martin Wilhelm. "Many citizens use the organic waste garbage can without us having any complaints. But not only is too little organic waste thrown into the right garbage can in Offenbach overall, this too small amount is often also heavily mixed with incorrect fillings."

With the inspection, the municipal utilities are responding to a federal law that comes into force on May 1, 2025. The "Minor Amendment to the Biowaste Ordinance 2022" obliges both waste disposal companies and recycling plants to pay attention to the quality of biowaste. On this basis, recycling plants must reject biowaste of poor quality. Alternatively, they can sort out the so-called impurities and charge the deliverers, in this case Stadtwerke Offenbach's Stadtservice, for this additional work.

"If the plants reject our biowaste due to an excessively high proportion of waste such as plastic compost bags, plastic, cigarette butts, dog excrement bags or cat litter, we have to take it to the waste incineration plant. This means that the ecological benefit of processing it into environmentally friendly gas and fertilizer is lost, and incineration is much more expensive than at the recycling plant," says Christian Loose, Deputy Head of ESO Eigenbetrieb Offenbach kommunale Dienstleistungen. "Ultimately, the citizens then pay these bills for sorting and incineration via the waste fees."

It is above all the so-called organic compost bags made of plastic that have repeatedly attracted attention during inspections of organic waste garbage cans. They must not be disposed of in the organic waste garbage can, even if the label suggests otherwise. "Although these bags also rot, they take longer to decompose than green waste and food waste in the fermentation plant," explains Christine Herkströter, Head of Resources and Waste Advice at Stadtwerke Offenbach's Stadtservice. "If the biowaste remains as humus, there is still undecomposed plastic waste among it, which is used as fertilizer on fields and green spaces. The amendment to the law is intended to prevent this."

Since July, staff from the resources and waste advisory service have been out and about in the selected districts, inspecting every garbage can before it is emptied. Any incorrectly emptied bins were marked with a tag and documented with a photo. This made it clear over a longer period of time who was actually separating the waste incorrectly and where it was possibly just an oversight. Christine Herkströter explains that the users of the garbage cans often joined in during the checks. "Fortunately, many people, with whom there were usually good conversations at the garbage can, were willing to learn and actually changed their behavior."