Gruner punk, the precious German stamp that for almost 30 years has indicated who must dispose of

GRUNER PUNKT GERMANY

A symbol to assure consumers that the product packaging will be disposed of by the same company (or one contracted for it) that manufactured it, thus establishing a virtuous circle. The logo was created to embody this principle. gruner punkt, the green dot formed by two arrows, one light and one dark, twisting in a perfect circle, has become the manifesto of a a real green revolution started 25 years ago in Germany.

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GREEN RECYCLING STAMP

The idea for this symbol was born from the imagination of a graphic designer, the Hamburg-born Lars Oehlschlaeger, who in 1991 was adopted by the then Minister of the Environment, Klaus Töpfer, to contribute to the resolution of the problem of waste disposal. waste. With this stamp, in fact, the government obliged those who manufactured the 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of the two intertwined arrows, which The Oehlschlaeger graph had taken from the Chinese concept of Yin and Yang, were withdrawn from the Dual System, achieving an initial result: citizens quickly learned the technique of waste separation.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.

COMPANIES RESPONSIBLE FOR WASTE DISPOSAL

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 by DSD.

The photos are taken from the Facebook page The green dot

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