Yesterday’s post included a long list of the categories for the trash and things you need to consider before you decide which bin an item would go in for the trash. So today, as a way to give you a sense of what it’s like sorting the trash here, I’ve organized a little virtual “practical exam” for life in Germany.

Ready?

Part 1: Figure out what to do with each of these common household items:

• Plastic coke bottle (1 pt)

Correct answer: take it to the supermarket for deposit recycling.

• Plastic coke bottle that you bought in Italy and carried back on the train to Germany? (2 pts)

Correct answer: Gelb. That’s because there’s no deposit on the label since you bought it in Italy, where they just recycle the plastic bottles in bins like the glass bottles. So, your Italian coke bottle will be rejected by the deposit recycling machine at the supermarket in Germany. Since there is no other place at the supermarket to put your rejected plastic bottle, so you will need to carry it home and put it in your yellow Gelb bag.

• Greenish glass olive oil bottle (1 pt)

Correct answer: Green glass recycling bin

• Metal bottle cap on that olive oil bottle (1 pt)

Correct answer: Gelb. Only glass goes into the glass bin, so all the metal tops on glass containers go in Gelb.

• Tissues and Paper towels (2 pt)

Correct answer: it depends. If they haven not been used, they go in with the Paper recylcing. If they’ve been used, then they go in the Restmüll.

• Cardboard milk or orange juice carton (1 pt)

Correct answer: Gelb. It is packaging — coated cardboard, not plain cardboard.

• Cardboard candy box (2 pts)

Correct answer: Paper, since it’s not coated and not big enough to be put with the cardboard. Assuming it was a regular size candy box, that is. However, you will need to remove any plastic inserts inside the box; those would go into the Gelb bag. And if the if cardboard box has a plastic window that shows the contents, then that piece of plastic needs to be removed and put into the Gelb; the rest goes in the Paper trash.

OK, how’d you do? That should have been an easy 10 pts, eh? But that just was the warm-up.

Now we’re ready for something more advanced.

Part 2: Advanced trash sorting

We’re going to unwrap a man’s dress shirt that came in a folded package. For those of you in North America, the packaging here on a man’s shirt is the same as there. I.e., the shirt comes neatly folded, not hanging on a hanger. For each piece of the packaging that comes with this shirt, we’re going to need to figure out what to do with it in order to throw it away before we can hang up the shirt.

Here we go:

• Plastic bag the shirt was wrapped in (1 pt)

Correct answer: Gelb. Right, that was easy

• 5 metal straight pins that are holding the folded shirt in place around the cardboard (2 pts)

Correct answer: Well, aluminum and tin cans go in the Gelb bag. So maybe these pins would go there. But then, perhaps pins wouldn’t be good there, since they were sharp and they would likely poke right through the yellow plastic Gelb. Hmm. So, maybe they should go instead into the Restmüll bin instead? But you can get into trouble for putting too much in the Restmüll. I know, let’s set these aside and come back to them at the end.

• Thick plastic piece strip that is around the top button on the shirt under the collar. (1 pt)

Correct answer: Gelb

• Cardboard strip underneath collar (1 pt)
  

Correct answer: Paper, since it’s thin cardboard and small enough for the bin, so based on the logic of the candy box I’m putting it in the Paper pile.

• Plastic clip thing that is holding the sleeves together at the top of the folded shirt? (1 pt)

Correct answer: Gelb. Well, at least, it’s plastic and it’s packaging, so that’s where I put it.

• 3 Metal clips that are holding the sides of the shirt to the cardboard, as well as holding one cuff folded in place? (2 pts)

Correct answer: Not clear. I’m putting these aside with the straight pins; we’ll come back to this.

• Piece of tissue paper under the shirt? (1 pt)

Correct answer: Paper. Whew. Finally, an easy one again.

• Thin, flat piece of cardboard the shirt is wrapped around (1 pt)

Correct answer: Paper.

Now we need to address the issue of those 5 metal straight pins and the 3 metal clips that we set aside. We need to decide if they belong in Gelb or in Restmüll? Luckily, it will be easy to settle the question. We just need to consult the 68-page booklet that is the guide to the trash-sorting. It’s published annually, and luckily the new one just arrived in the mail.

Before we can look in the guide, though, we will need to look up the German word for “straight pin”, since the booklet is all in German (of course). Here’s where the joys of learning a foreign language meet the joys of sorting the trash: click here to check out how many different words there are for “pin” in the English-Germany dictionary. If you click on that link, you’ll see that there a lot of words for all manners of “pins”.

Except, there is no separate entry for “straight pin” in this dictionary.

Now, we could consult the big German dictionary that I have on my bookshelf down the hall, but I’d really rather not have to go that far, literally or figuratively. I see in the online list that Nagel is a possible word in German for some kind of pin. Now, I know for a fact that Nagel is also the word used for a “nail” (the type you use with a hammer) in German. Reasoning that that if I read in the book where a Nagel would go in the trash, then I can proceed with the assumption that a straight pin would go in the same place.

So, it’s time to consult the Müll guide. Thankfully, a section of those 68 pages are helpfully organized into a chart with an alphabetical list of names of objects and their corresponding place in the trash. Consulting the chart for Nagel, I see that small amounts of them can go in the Restmüll. However, large amounts of them should be placed into metal jars and taken to a separate “Big Metal stuff” collecting place on the outskirts of town.

Hmm. Really? Interesting. I ponder how many nails are “large amounts” and how that translates to straight pins numbers. I need to be honest: I actually bought Chris 5 shirts, so I have repeated this unwrapping process 5 times, accumulating a pile of 25 metal straight pins. Is that a “large amount”? Do I need a metal jar? This is getting complicated. But, I’m going to decide that straight pins are smaller than nails, so the correct answer is — according to my reasoning — Restmüll for the straight pins.

Oh, but I also have those metal clips, too. But they aren’t pointed and sharp like a nail or the pins; they are more like an extra large, extra thick paper clip. Looking up the word for paper clip, Büroklammer, in the trash guide, I see that they are straightforward: any number of them can go in the Restmüll,.

I know, I know. That was enough fun for one day, right?. But we’re not quite done yet. Because I forgot to mention we need to do something with all the tags I cut off the shirt before I started unpacking it.

• Two Paper price tags (2 pt)
  

Correct answer: Paper

• Plastic manufacturer tag explaining the wonders of this wrinkle-free shirt (1 pt)

Correct answer: Gelb

• Paper manufacturer advertising tag (1 pt)
  

Correct answer: Paper

• Paper manufacturer brochure (1 pt)
  

Correct answer: Paper

• 2 Thin plastic strips that attach the paper price tags to the shirt (2 pt)

Correct answer: Gelb. But then, these are so small that they aren’t really packaging in the same sense, even if they are plastic. So maybe they really belong in Restmüll. But I have NO idea what to call them in English in order to look it up in the German dictionary, in order to find the German word, in order to look up in the Müll guide. So maybe Restmüll would be a better place for these things as a default, since they are so small. I have no idea. Credit will be given for either answer, as I change my mind mid-way through, and sometimes put them in one or the other.

• Strings attaching paper and plastic manufacturing tags (2 pt)

Correct answer: Restmüll, I hope. In the online dictionary, the first 3 words given to translate “string” are Schnur, Bindfaden, and Kette — none of those are in the Müll guide, so I gave up and put the little piece of string in the Restmüll.

• Ribbon that attaches the paper brochure (1 pt)

Correct answer: Another good question. A “ribbon” is called a Band in German. And … Band is not in the Müll guide. Hmph. Well, since it doesn’t seem like it’s packaging per se, I’ll go with Restmüll for the ribbon.

I think that NOW we may be done.

Scoring

0-5: Only allowed to take out the trash, not put anything into it.

6-18: Not bad, but tripped up by a few easy things. You need to study that guide more and get back to me.

18-25: You probably are ready to move here, particularly if you didn’t need to look up the German words for all of those common household items.

26-30: Please come live with me and take over the trash sorting duties.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for recycling as an idea and will happily go the trouble to do it in most instances. But when I have to spend time each day looking up something new in a guide, just to figure out how to throw it away, the system has become unnecessarily complicated, IMHO. If it’s too much trouble, I don’t think most people will do it at all.

But that’s just me.

Now, we really need to end with a Broadway song here, since that’s the lively kind of music I find useful to play to sort trash by. Since we’ve gone to so much trouble today with the trash, I guess we could tap those troubles away with this rousing number from Mack and Mabel called Tap Your Troubles Away.

It’s a stretch, I know, but hey, I’m tired after sorting all that trash.  And sorting the trash is exactly the opposite of the theme of this song called Trash, by my favorite accapella group The Bobs. But perhaps the guy in that song who leaves his trash all over the house just didn’t know which bin to put it in.

I’m just saying.  😉