Across Europe, the will to address our waste problem is growing at municipal and state level. Many cities look terrible with waste, but also the disposal is tragic. For takeaway packaging, there is nothing to recycle: mixed materials, small items, high contamination.

Various reuse islands are emerging. Cities host round tables and get an overview of the options. The legal framework is already being established...

Legislation is increasingly setting the necessary incentives at municipal level for less single-use waste. Everyone benefits from a future-proof, fair and genuine circular economy in clean cities.

If only there is a system that can deliver on the promise infrastructurally.

Municipal spending on public waste disposal is enormous. Berlin alone employs nearly 2,000 staff and a fleet of vehicles to collect and incinerate waste from nearly 27,000 public bins and public parks.

A system that increasingly deploys this personnel to also collect reusable packaging from public spaces for reuse — that would be something. Does it exist? Looking at Berlin, where multiple system operators piloted the shared infrastructure of the EINFACH MEHRWEG ecosystem, it becomes imaginable!