Inconspicuous women and men hanging around near recycling points. A camera in hand, plastic gloves in a jacket pocket so that criminals can be convicted immediately. Such a scenario would exist in the future at particularly polluted collection points, according to municipal officer Kristina Frank (CSU). She wants to hire detectives to curb the wild dumping of bulky waste, building rubble or household waste at the containers. But the coalition of Greens/Pink List and SPD/Volt wants to slow down the top Munich waste management boss in the municipal committee on Thursday.
“We think it’s the wrong way to spy on people,” said Green City Councilor Sibylle Stöhr. They would rather pursue an educational approach than 007 ambitions. Her colleague Kathrin Abele from the SPD also “didn’t have a good feeling” about threatening detectives and fines.
They have not yet prepared any fixed alternatives, also because they demanded more information about where the focal points in the city area were. But a trend is already emerging: Greens and SPD want to provide more information, point out the existing offer for the disposal of bulky waste and also check whether this could be expanded.
Waste watchers ensure order in Vienna
As is so often the case, the Greens have taken a look at their role model in Vienna, where so-called waste watchers ensure that the city is cleaner. Around 40 full-time garbage consultants and, if in doubt, garbage inspectors with the authority to impose fines are on the road there. “A concept that you could look at,” said City Councilor Stöhr. Municipal officer Frank also had the idea of using municipal staff to clean up the recycling points.
However, she wasn’t thinking of employees from her own company or the waste management company in Munich (AWM), which she reports to, but of the municipal security service. One could have “imagined this task in the hands of the municipal field service, which was rejected by the KVR,” said Frank.
She didn’t let her eyes wander as far as Vienna, but contented herself with a brief glance at Ebersberg. Since 2010, the district town has relied on detectives to monitor collection points. According to the current legal situation, people who illegally dump bulky waste, for example, are not allowed to approach them or warn them with a fine, but they can take photos and examine the dumped waste for clues that prove the identity of the polluter.
The municipality then initiates the subsequent procedure as a sovereign task. Frank also wanted to hire detectives in Munich for a six-month pilot project based on this model. However, Green and Frank may be getting closer to the idea of Vienna, because after a successful test assignment, the municipal officer also wanted to think about introducing so-called “waste scouts” at the AWM.
Hot spots are the access roads and arterial roads
“Even more frequent emptying and cleaning of the container sites by the responsible waste disposal companies does not lead to a sufficiently tidy townscape,” she explained. “Especially at some ‘hot spots’ there is gross contamination through the illegal dumping of residual or Bulky waste or even electronic devices.” According to her house, such hot spots are the access roads and arterial roads, for example in Allach or Solln. A conspicuous accumulation of littered recyclables islands can also be found in Riem.
The coalition also sees that there is pressure to act. The wild disposal of garbage is “an insane nuisance,” said SPD city councilor Abele. However, spot checks by detectives would not bring any reliable improvement, but could “merely shift the problem”, fears City Councilor Stöhr. The municipal department experiences directly that the state of the recycling islands is burning on the souls of the residents. The authority explained on request that 70 notifications of contaminated recycling islands had been received via the “Mach München Besser” platform, which has only been in existence since the beginning of March 2022.
The companies commissioned to clean and empty the recycling points reported a significant increase in rubbish that had no business there. Increases of 25 percent in one year have recently been registered. “Building rubble, building materials and, for example, empty paint buckets from craftsmen or construction companies” were also increasingly found, the companies said.
In the worst case, the residual waste then also stood in front of containers that were too full next to a sea of bottles that the city and the private waste disposal companies want to drain with an increased emptying frequency and in some cases already have. Garbage containers are a condition, said Kristina Frank, who “doesn’t look good” in Munich.