Yellow bags for the disposal of packaging waste are scarce in Germany. Several municipalities are already turning to their citizens and pointing out the supply bottleneck, including the neighboring district of Freising. Hold on, stay here: Don’t go straight to the recycling center or the citizens’ office to hoard the last rolls. The Wurzer waste disposal company responsible for the district of Erding says it has enough in stock to bridge the bottleneck.
The reason for the tense situation are supply problems with the required plastic types LDPE and HPDE. Andreas Bruckschen, managing director of the Federal Association of German Waste Management, Water and Raw Materials Management, speaks of production downtimes and ordered goods are currently not being delivered. This applies to deliveries from Europe as well as from China. Complete production lines stand still. Bruckschen states that there is a “backlog” that will probably only be resolved in spring 2022.
The good news: The district of Erding is exceptionally not affected by this bottleneck. This is assured by Daniel Hausner, Managing Director of Logistics at the Wurzer Umwelt waste disposal company. Wurzer Umwelt, based in the municipality of Eitting, not only supplies the district citizens with the yellow bags, but also around a million people in the south and east of Munich. 15 million bags are needed for this every year. Hausner said the company would be spared the shortage through its long-term purchasing policy. Because Wurzer buys annual quantities that are delivered every three months. He had already spoken to the supplier and had been assured that the delivery would be received for another three months. There are also yellow bags in stock. Nevertheless, the description of the market situation is correct, at first the yellow bags have become considerably more expensive, and now there are no more if one has not secured a long-term contract. Of course, there are also advantages to buying at short notice, because the price of the yellow bags is related to the price of crude oil, from which the granulate is obtained, with a time lag. But there is also the risk of gambling away. Or, as the saying goes: the dogs are the last to bite.
But that is still not an unsolvable problem, packaging waste does not have to be piled up in the garage for months with those affected. Because Wurzer also had a plan B for the eventuality when there were actually no yellow sacks for a while. If necessary, citizens should then use garbage bags that they can purchase in stores. It is only important that the bags are transparent. Because it must remain recognizable for the employees in the disposal vehicles that it is only packaging waste that is not contaminated with other substances.
This is also a big problem with the yellow bags. Nationwide, around a third of the content is no packaging waste. In some places, the proportion of missed throws is even 50 percent. And depending on the foreign matter, the entire contents of the yellow bin or yellow sack can be lost for recycling. If the mix is too great, the garbage disposal can therefore refuse to collect it and demand better separation from the consumers. The sacks are often used for purposes other than those for which they were intended, as sacks of leaves or clothes or to keep bicycle saddles dry.