German municipalities publish a waste calendar, the Abfallkalender, for each year. The Regensburg calendar for 2026 explains how to use it. Look up your street, note the district numbers for residual waste, paper and recycling, and read the dates off the monthly pages. A changed collection day is marked with the letter Ä. The bins must be out by 6 a.m. on collection day and no more than 24 hours before. Residual waste bins may stand no more than 10 meters from the truck’s regular stopping place. Fulda’s waste information for 2026 lists, holiday by holiday, which collection of residual and organic waste moves to which day.
environment
The Ten-Year Forest Plan
The town of Neu-Anspach in Hesse manages its forest by a Forsteinrichtung, a forest management plan, for the years 2023 to 2032. The plan sets the use and the measures for each part of the forest and proposes a harvest of 45,581 cubic meters for the decade. The town of Herborn also plans its forest for ten years at a time. Its plan works with Umtriebszeiten, rotation periods. These are the average production periods for each species of tree.
Seven Thousand Oaks
At documenta 7 in Kassel in 1982, Joseph Beuys began his work 7000 Eichen – Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung, 7,000 oaks, city forestation instead of city administration. He piled 7,000 basalt columns on the Friedrichsplatz. Each tree was planted together with one of the stones. Beuys died in 1986. At documenta 8 in 1987, the last tree was planted next to the first one. Beuys said that planting trees could not be surpassed for Nachhaltigkeit, lasting effect.
Costs Without End
German hard coal mining has ended, but some of its costs will never end. German calls them Ewigkeitslasten, eternity burdens. Water must be pumped out of the old mines permanently. Land that has sunk must be kept from flooding, and groundwater at former mine sites must be cleaned. The RAG Foundation was set up in 2007 to pay for these tasks from 2019 onward. A paper on its tasks put the expected spending from 2019 at about 220 million euros. If its assets are not enough, North Rhine-Westphalia and Saarland guarantee the financing permanently. A paper on the foundation’s tasks carries the title Ewigkeit ist eine Menge Zukunft, eternity is a lot of future.
The Imperative of Responsibility
In Das Prinzip Verantwortung (The Imperative of Responsibility, 1979), the philosopher Hans Jonas proposed a new rule for an age of powerful technology: Handle so, dass die Wirkungen deiner Handlung verträglich sind mit der Permanenz echten menschlichen Lebens auf Erden. (Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life on earth.) Where the risks are uncertain, he asked for a Heuristik der Furcht, a heuristic of fear. That means to die schlechtere Prognose der besseren vorzuziehen, to give the worse forecast priority over the better one.
The Residents of Grünheide
In 2024, Tesla wanted to expand its car plant in Grünheide near Berlin with a freight station, warehouses and a daycare center for employees. More than 100 hectares of forest were to be cleared. The municipality asked its residents. On 20 February 2024, it announced the result: 3,499 against and 1,882 in favor, with a turnout of over 70 percent. The vote was not binding. The state’s economy minister said it showed dass die Bedenken und Befürchtungen der Menschen deutlich überwiegen, that people’s concerns and fears clearly outweigh the rest. Tesla cut its plan. Instead of 100 hectares, 50 were to be cleared, and the planned logistics areas and the daycare center were dropped. On 16 May 2024, the municipal council approved the smaller plan.
Long-livedness
Long-livedness. A German product virtue with a noun of its own, appearing in ecolabel criteria, consumer testing and advertising copy. The lifespan is a stated specification rather than an accident of build quality.
The right to repair
European right-to-repair legislation, strongly supported in Germany, requires manufacturers to make spare parts, tools and repair information available to independent repairers for specified periods. Repairability became a legal property of the product.
The waste hierarchy
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.
The precautionary principle
The precautionary principle is a German export. It arose as the Vorsorgeprinzip in German environmental law in the early 1970s and was written into the Federal Emission Protection Act of 15 March 1974.
It reached international law in 1987 at the North Sea conference, and was entrenched in 1992 as Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration, from where it passed into most international environmental conventions.
The principle holds that where serious or irreversible harm is possible, the absence of full scientific certainty is not a reason to wait.
Germany did not adopt an international norm about prevention. It wrote one and the world took it.