INDESTRUCTABLE PACKAGING pointmade campaigns for reducing the waste mountain that is still being sent to landfill in the UK. My particular concern is plastic packaging, some of which takes hundreds of years to decompose and is made from oil which is becoming scarce. A lot of reasons to sort out this mess - in particular in view to the UK rapidly running out of available landfill space to dump its waste (in 2007 the media announced there were only 9 years left then all UK landfill sites would be full). This is despite the fact that other EU countries manage a 90% recycling rate of household rubbish - with the Green Dot system. Please read on.
Green Dot is currently the standard take-back programme in 21 European countries and Canada and is based on the ‘producer/polluter pays’ principle.
The Green Dot (Grüner Punkt) does not mean that this packaging is recyclable or is made of recycled material. It is afinancing symbolthat denotes that for packaging bearing this symbol a financial contribution has been made by the producer, i.e. a manufacturer or filler, to a packaging recovery organisation, a so-called compliance scheme.
The fee covers the cost of collection, sorting and recycling and is calculated according to the volume, material type and weight of the packaging used by the producer. Green Dot originated in Germany in 1991 to finance the Duales System Deutschland (DSD), a not for profit packaging recovery organisation (in Austria, another country with an impressive recycling performance, the comparable organisation is ARA).
Under German packaging regulations suppliers are under obligation to take back and recycle up to 70% of their packaging and submit audited documents to prove it. The Green Dot can be applied to the packaging when the licence fee has been paid. Householders are provided with two bins for their waste, one for normal waste and one, usually yellow bin, for products bearing the Green Dot symbol. This makes sorting very easy for consumers, as the Green Dot logo quickly identifies what can be collected for recycling and what cannot. DSD arranges for the collection of the yellow bin and arranges contracts with reprocessing companies to reprocess the recovered waste. Even in public areas such as railway stations, airports or shopping precincts, rubbish bins with several holes for different waste types encourage the public to separate waste while out and about. Getting it wrong is a possibility that cannot be ruled out, but contamination between the various material types is tackled later on as the recovered waste is being sorted again post-collection by the compliance companies.
The Green Dot is the most widely used trademark in the world and can be found on the majority of European packaging, where it signifies to consumers that the company cares about the environment and is fulfilling its obligations. The logo itself does not necessarily have to be green, but can be any colour to blend in with the chosen packaging design.
INDESTRUCTABLE PACKAGING pointmade campaigns for reducing the waste mountain that is still being sent to landfill in the UK. My particular concern is plastic packaging, some of which takes hundreds of years to decompose and is made from oil which is becoming scarce. A lot of reasons to sort out this mess - in particular in view to the UK rapidly running out of available landfill space to dump its waste (in 2007 the media announced there were only 9 years left then all UK landfill sites would be full). This is despite the fact that other EU countries manage a 90% recycling rate of household rubbish - with the Green Dot system. Please read on. 
The Green Dot (Grüner Punkt) does not mean that this packaging is recyclable or is made of recycled material. It is a financing symbol that denotes that for packaging bearing this symbol a financial contribution has been made by the producer, i.e. a manufacturer or filler, to a packaging recovery organisation, a so-called compliance scheme.