[flohofwoe]

> Side note 2: Germany now has a large scale "Mehrweg- und Pfandsystem" for bottles.

This was already standard procedure in East Germany though, pretty much everything from glass bottles (via a "Pfandsystem" much the same as today's minus the deposit machines) to paper to scrap metal was recycled. We even had regular 'waste paper collections' at school which were organized like a competition. This had little to do with environmentalism but instead to get more independent from resource imports.

(as you mentioned, the environment was much worse off in East Germany than it is today, especially around industrial locations)

[lispm]

Thanks for the comment!

Wikipedia describes that here (in German): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/SERO

[kdmtctl]

It was basically the same across the Soviet Block. Used to grow in a former USSR republic and did exactly this.