The German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) said on Friday, December 27, 2019 that its volume of household waste per capita fell by 1.5 per cent from 462 kg to 455kg in 2018.
Destatis said that the main reason for the decrease was the strong decline in bio-waste volumes caused by the extreme drought in 2018.
On average, Germans produced 120kg of bio-waste, 5kg less than in 2017.
The statistics office also noted that in total, 37.8 million tons of waste, including residual household waste, bio-waste, recyclables, and bulky waste, were collected from households in Germany, down by 0.5 million tons compared to 2018.
It added that in 2018, the amount of recyclable materials including paper, mixed packaging, and glass taken by waste collection fell by 0.1 million tons to 12.1 million tons.
This is in comparison to 2017 which amounted to 146kg of recyclables per capita.
The German Ministry of Environment (BMU) recently presented a draft Bill to ban disposable plastic bags with a thickness of less than 50 micrometres.
However, in 2016, the ministry and retailers agreed that trade would stop handing out plastic bags to customers for free to raise awareness among German consumers.
