Miele’s TwinDos system doses the detergent by itself, according to the hardness of the water, the size of the load and the type of soiling. A sensor shows on the display when the detergent container is empty.
Miele cites a study by the Öko-Institut, completed in 2013, on the savings from automatic dosing. The institute’s project dealt with dosing errors that come from consumer behavior.
SERO was the East German system for collecting used materials. The name stood for VEB Kombinat Sekundär-Rohstofferfassung, the state combine for collecting secondary raw materials. SERO paid five pfennigs for a bottle and ten pfennigs for a kilo of paper. Children in the Young Pioneers, the state youth organization, collected from house to house.
The reason was a shortage of raw materials and a policy of self-sufficiency. According to a conference presentation on the system, the recycling rate in 1989 was 54.5 percent for paper and 65.5 percent for bottles.
In mid-July 2021, a flood in the Ahr valley killed 134 people. Warnings had gone out days earlier. The European Flood Awareness System, EFAS, said its forecasts showed a “high” probability of flooding in the Rhine area as early as 9 and 10 July. From 10 to 14 July, it sent more than 25 warnings for parts of the Rhine and Meuse basins to the national authorities. A meteorologist of the German Weather Service said its models had captured the rainfall well days ahead, and that the first pre-warnings went out three days in advance. On the afternoon of 14 July, the state environment office forecast a level at the Ahr well above the previous record of 3.7 meters. Around 9:30 p.m., it named an expected level of almost seven meters. The municipality of Altenahr had asked the district early to raise the disaster alarm. The district first refused and pointed to data that still had to be checked. It declared the disaster only around 11 p.m. and ordered the evacuation of buildings within 50 meters of the river.
A survey by the University of Potsdam later asked 1,315 people affected by the floods. In Rhineland-Palatinate, 29 percent said they had received no warning at all. Of all respondents who had been warned, 85 percent had not expected very severe flooding. The researcher Annegret Thieken said: Ein großes Problem bestand darin, dass die Warnmeldungen das Ausmaß der Flut nicht ausreichend widerspiegelten. A major problem was that the warnings did not reflect the scale of the flood well enough.
Passing the hunting exam is not the last step for a German hunter. Under the Federal Hunting Act, only a person who holds an annual hunting license may lease a hunting ground, and that person must already have held one in Germany for three years. Young people aged 16 and 17 can receive only a Jugendjagdschein, a youth hunting license. It allows them to hunt only in the company of a parent or guardian, or of a supervisor whom the guardian has appointed in writing. The law adds: die Begleitperson muß jagdlich erfahren sein, the companion must be experienced in hunting. Holders of the youth license may not take part in group hunts, the Gesellschaftsjagden.
Germans can buy firewood that they cut themselves in a public forest, as a Selbstwerber, a self-harvester. Bavaria’s official service portal lists what is usually needed for a permit. The applicant needs proof of private liability insurance and proof of a chainsaw course recognized by the agricultural trade association, the Berufsgenossenschaft. The applicant also needs certified protective gear: a helmet with ear and face protection, gloves, a signal jacket, cut-protection trousers and cut-protection boots. In Saxony’s state forest, anyone working with a chainsaw must provide proof of competence. The state forest company’s sales terms add that firewood may not be cut by a person working alone.
On 20 September 2019, the German research icebreaker Polarstern set out on the MOSAiC expedition. The plan was to let the ship freeze into the Arctic ice and drift with it for a year. The federal government described the departure in one sentence: Nach zehn Jahren der Vorbereitung war es soweit, after ten years of preparation, the time had come. The expedition cost 140 million euros. About 600 scientists from different fields took part. Six icebreakers were to supply the ship, and a runway for supply aircraft was to be built on the ice floe. On 4 October 2019, the ship was frozen into a floe and its main engines were switched off. From then on, it moved only with the ice, inside a drift corridor that had been calculated in advance.
In 1981 the news magazine Der Spiegel ran a series on acid rain under the title Das stille Sterben – Säureregen zerstört den deutschen Wald, the silent death: acid rain is destroying the German forest. A soil scientist from Göttingen was quoted as saying the first great forests would die within five years. A new word entered German, and French as well: das Waldsterben, the dying of the forest. Policy followed. The ordinance on large combustion plants came into force on 1 July 1983. Unleaded petrol and the catalytic converter followed. In 2004 a forestry economist noted that the forecasts of that time had proved untenable. Environmental groups answer that the forest survived because of what was done. In 2013 the Bund Naturschutz in Bavaria called it fatal to deny these successes.
In 1922 the forest scientist Alfred Möller of Eberswalde published Der Dauerwaldgedanke, the idea of the permanent forest. Its core is the Stetigkeit des Waldwesens, the continuity of the forest as a living whole, above all by giving up clear-cutting. Möller’s example was the Bärenthoren estate, where Friedrich von Kalitsch had managed a pine forest this way since 1884. Von Kalitsch said: Ich mache niemals Kahlschläge und durchforste meinen ganzen Wald persönlich auszeichnend. I never clear-cut, and I personally mark the trees for thinning in my whole forest. Möller called clear-cut forestry Holzackerbau, timber farming. Under the German Empire, the usual practice was to plant single-species stands of spruce and pine and to harvest them after a few decades. A presentation on the website of the Brandenburg forest administration puts the idea in one line: Stetigkeit ist das Gegenteil von Plötzlichkeit. Continuity is the opposite of suddenness.
In April 2009 Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner had the cultivation of the genetically modified maize MON 810 in Germany banned. The maize had already been approved. She said there was justified reason to assume that it posed a danger to the environment. She called it “keine politische Entscheidung”, not a political decision, but a technical one.
Bavaria’s Minister-President Horst Seehofer said: “Neue Studien zwingen uns dazu, die offenen Fragen erst einmal zu klären.” New studies force us to clarify the open questions first. On 28 May 2009 the Higher Administrative Court in Lüneburg upheld the ban.
On 24 June 2016 the Bundestag decided to ban unconventional fracking for commercial purposes. Only four test drillings for scientific purposes were to be allowed, with the consent of the state concerned. In 2021 the Bundestag was to review the ban on the basis of scientific findings.
The SPD explained the decision in a leaflet: “Wir stellen die Gesundheit und den Schutz des Trinkwassers an erste Stelle – vor wirtschaftliche Interessen.” We put health and the protection of drinking water first, before economic interests.