In practice, it is a mark indicating that the manufacturer has paid a contribution to finance the collection, sorting, and recycling of its product's packaging, according to a principle of responsibility: whoever places packaging on the market must contribute to the costs of its recovery, and therefore pays based on the type and quantity of packaging, and the funds raised are used to finance the entire waste disposal chain.
The idea for this symbol was born from the imagination of a graphic designer, Hamburg-born Lars Oelschlaeger, who managed to have it adopted by the then Minister of the Environment, Klaus Töpfer, to help solve the problem of waste disposal. With this stamp, in fact, the government obliges those who produce packaging to also dispose of it.Easier said than done. Initially, the idea was to get producers to go around customers' homes and collect packages and envelopes or, conversely, invite consumers to return used packaging to supermarkets: an unthinkable system if efficiency was the goal. Thus the idea of creating a new protocol was born, called Dual SystemIn this way, a private company would have sold producers the license for the green dot to be stuck on their products, while also taking care of waste disposal. Packages, boxes, and envelopes bearing the stamp of the two intertwined arrows, which The Oehlschlaeger graph had taken from the Chinese concept of Yin and Yang, were withdrawn from the Dual System, achieving an initial result: citizens quickly learned the technique of waste separation. For several years now, the Green Dot "Der Grüne Punkt" symbol has no longer been mandatory on packaging in Germany, but many companies, given the effectiveness of the system, have opted to continue placing the sticker on packaging for other European countries.
In the meantime, a waste collection system has been established alongside the Duales System Deutschland GmbH (DSD). waste A private system, parallel to the public one, designed to collect and dispose of products from participating companies. Thus, over the years, the "Green Dot" application has become a guarantee certificate, ensuring the end customer knows that the packaging will be collected and disposed of through the DSD.
The system is called dual because it has two responsibilities: the municipality collects regular urban waste, and the companies finance the collection and recycling of packaging through authorized companies. This prevents the cost from falling entirely on municipal taxes, and at the same time, the system ensures a constant flow of recovered materials, encouraging investment in sorting and recycling facilities.
In February 2026, the Federal Government adopted a bill (VerpackDG) intended to replace the current packaging law (Packaging Act), to align it with the new European framework. Thus the Grüner Punkt has changed context: the The symbol continues to exist as a trademark and as part of some EPR systems, but the focus of the legislation is increasingly on compliance with European requirements rather than simply the logo's presence on packaging. The focus is shifting to packaging design and environmental performance, with harmonized rules across Europe on:
- packaging design;
- recyclability;
- minimum recycled material content;
- labeling;
- Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).
Read also:
- Reduce plastic every day
- How waste can be reduced
- Treviso: Record waste separation and lowest waste tax in Italy.
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