The Green Dot

The Green Dot (Der Grüne Punkt) is the license symbol of a European network of industry-funded systems for recycling the packaging materials of consumer goods. It was originally introduced in 1991 by Duales System Deutschland (DSD) following the introduction of the 1991 German Ordinance on the Avoidance and Recovery of Packaging Waste (aka Packaging Ordinance, Verpackungsverordnung) which became the basis for the 1994 European Union Packaging Directive.

Under these waste recovery schemes manufacturers are made responsible for the recycling or disposal of any packaging in which their products are sold. Instead of collecting recyclable packaging themselves, they can join the Green Dot scheme and pay the license fees for using the Green Dot logo on their packaging labels.

As the Green Dot license fees are based on the weight and type of packaging materials used as well as the volumes of packaged products manufactured, the scheme encourages manufacturers to cut down on their use of packaging in order to minimize the cost of license fees which are passed on to consumers, making their merchandise costlier.

The Green Dot logo communicates to consumers that the manufacturer contributes to the cost of recovery and recycling of the used packaging. The logo also informs consumers to place the usedpackages in separate yellow bags or yellow wheelie bins for collection by DSD-operated waste collection vehicles and sorted and recycled in DSD facilities. If any packaging is found in the yellow bags without the Green Dot logo, the manufacturers are fined, as they have not effectively complied with the law on recovering their used packaging.

The successful German Green Dot scheme has now been replicated in 23 other European countries, as part of the European Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive 94/62/EC. This binds all manufacturers worldwide that sell products in the 27 member states of the European Community to recover their own packaging. The Green Dot is now used by more than 130,000 companies encompassing 460 billion packages.

See here a series of recycling videos produced by the DSD.