Germany Packaging Machinery Market Research Report - PMMI

Duales System Deutschland AG is a privately operated public limited company that is not listed on the
stock exchange. It is organized as a nonprofit company on account of the purpose for which it was set
up: The Dual System fulfills the obligations prescribed by the German Packaging Ordinance of 1991
and its Amendment of 1998 on behalf of industry and commerce. As an umbrella organization for the
recycling of consumer packaging, the company neither owns nor runs any sorting or recycling plants
itself. Rather, it organizes the collection, sorting, and recycling of packaging in line with the
specifications of the Packaging Ordinance with the support of 416 waste management partners
throughout Germany. The objective of the company is to reduce and recycle consumer packaging.
The Dual System was founded on September 28, 1990, in anticipation of the Packaging Ordinance,
which came into force in 1991. Initially structured as a private limited company, it was converted into a
public limited company in 1997. Today it has around 600 shareholders from industry and commerce.
More than 19,000 licensees use the Green Dot and, in this way, finance the collection, sorting, and in
the case of plastics, recycling of consumer packaging. License fees and hence company turnover
amounted to around 2.05 billion € in 2000.
The Dual System is a private initiative that takes over product responsibility in the consumer packaging
sector. The term “dual” signifies a second system operating parallel to municipal waste collection and
disposal. This is because the Packaging Ordinance requires the recycling of sales packaging to be
organized by way of a separate nationwide system. The Product Recycling and Waste Management Act
of 1994 also transfers responsibility for “waste for recovery” to the private waste management industry
in other industrial fields, while the municipal residual waste collection and disposal system is
responsible for “waste for disposal,” i.e. by means of landfilling and incineration.
5.4.1 The Green Dot in Europe
Organizations in 13 European states are now using the Green Dot scheme and mark: Austria, Belgium,
Spain, France, Luxembourg, Portugal, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Latvia, Hungary, and the Czech
Republic as well as Germany. The Green Dot is establishing itself more and more firmly as a uniform
European trademark. More than 460 billion pieces of packaging marked with the Green Dot are
distributed worldwide.
In 1995, Duales System Deutschland AG decided to transfer the right to use the trademark to a
European organization in the form of a general license. To this end, it founded the Packaging Recovery
Organization Europe s.p.r.l. (PRO EUROPE). Its task is to grant the right to use the Green Dot
trademark to national collection and recovery systems on the basis of uniform rules and regulations.
5.4.2 How the Dual System works
The legal basis for the work of the Dual System is the Packaging Ordinance of June 12, 1991. In
accordance with the legal regulations, the Dual System organizes the collection and sorting of postconsumer
sales packaging on a private basis and arranges for it to be forwarded for recycling.
The Packaging Ordinance requires the collection system for recyclable materials to be harmonized with
existing municipal collection systems. This is why there are various collection and sorting systems
throughout Germany.
In principle, there are two basic systems for consumer packaging: the curbside system and the ‘bring’
system.