Waste baskets in Augsburg
The waste management and public cleaning service of the City of Augsburg (aws) has over 150 employees who collect waste daily from waste baskets and waste bins on the edges of roads and paths in the public space.
Each year the public cleaning service of the City of Augsburg collects approx. 2,300 Mg of waste from wastepaper bins along the different cleaning tours through the city area. bifa Umweltinstitut was engaged to analyse the contents of waste baskets in the public space, to find out the size of the packaging waste fraction. In detailed sorting analyses, we examined the contents of 683 emptied waste baskets from six city districts. Only around 4 % of them were overfilled.
Disposable paper tableware (18.7 %) accounted for the largest share of the waste basket volume, followed by other packaging made of paper (12.9 %) and cardboard (12.2 %). By contrast, the percentage weight of these fractions is significantly lower and in total is only 18.8 %. The largest share of the waste basket volume in terms of weight is attributable to container glass with 25.8 %. These bottles were primarily for alcoholic drinks.
In total, packaging of all types accounts for around 73 % of the volume. The percentage share of all packaging in the waste baskets by weight is around 52 %. The share of non-packaging made of paper, cardboard, glass, plastic and metal is rather low at around 11 % by volume and 14 % by weight. The remaining contents of the waste baskets was mainly organic material, especially food waste and dog excrement.
You want more information?
You are welcome to contact me:
Dr. Siegfried Kreibe
skreibe@bifa.de