Verschwendung — squandering. A strong word in German, applied to time, money, materials and talent alike.
Sparsam — thrifty, and it is praise. Applied to a person, an engine or a design.
Aus wenig viel machen — to make much from little.
Wer den Pfennig nicht ehrt, ist des Talers nicht wert — who does not honour the penny is not worthy of the thaler.
German waste law establishes a hierarchy: avoidance first, then reuse, then recycling, then energy recovery, then disposal. Disposal is the last of five options, and the law names the order.
Wärmedämmung. German building regulation prescribes insulation standards for new construction and for major renovation, with required values for walls, roofs, windows and doors. The efficiency of the building is regulated at the point of construction, when it is cheapest to achieve.
Sparen means both to save money and to economise on anything. German appliances have Sparprogramme, cars have Spritsparen, buildings have Energiesparen. One verb covers thrift and efficiency, and Germans use it for both without noticing the join.
Kraft-Wärme-Kopplung. Combined heat and power. German plants capture the heat that electricity generation would otherwise waste and pipe it into district heating networks. The waste from one process is the input to another, by design.
Degree of effect. The German word for efficiency in the engineering sense — output divided by input — and it appears in ordinary conversation about boilers, cars and appliances. The ratio is a household concept, not a specialist one.
Passivhaus. A German building standard, developed in the early 1990s, specifying a house that needs almost no active heating — achieved through insulation, airtightness, triple glazing and heat recovery ventilation. The standard is defined by energy consumed per square metre per year. The building is designed backwards from the number.
Die Mülltrennung. A German household separates paper, glass by colour, packaging, organic waste and residual waste, into separate bins with separate collection schedules. The system assumes materials retain value after use, and asks every household to preserve it.
Das Pfandsystem. German drinks containers carry a deposit, refunded on return, with reusable bottles cycling through the system many times before being retired. The bottle is not packaging. It is an asset in circulation, and the deposit is what keeps it moving.
Introduced in 1978, the Blue Angel was the first environmental product label in the world. It began with six product groups — including CFC-free aerosols, quiet lawnmowers and returnable bottles — and now covers more than twelve thousand products from around sixteen hundred companies.
Criteria are set by a jury drawn from industry and interest groups, revised every three or four years, and cover climate, health, water and resources. Germany invented the idea of certifying a product by what it consumes.