Will fees in Osterholz: Leftists demand fair tariffs for families!

Will fees in Osterholz: Leftists demand fair tariffs for families!

Osterholz, Deutschland - The discussion about the garbage fees in the Osterholz district picks up speed. Herbert Behrens, a member of the Left Party's district council, has been urged to escape the current tariff structures. Households particularly often affected are large families and multi-person households who often have to deal with the bonus malus system. Behrens criticizes that many households do not get by with the given number of regulations and calls for an adjustment of the fee structure.

Currently the average garbage requirement is 8.93 liters per person per week, while the system is only calculated with 8 liters. For numerous six-person households, this leads to additional payments in almost 85% of cases. Behrens therefore advocates a more realistic approach that responds more on the actual needs of the citizens.

contradiction and arguments

The head of the Osterholz (KAW) circular economy, Werner Schauer, sees things differently. According to his statements, the current regulation promotes incentives for waste separation and waste prevention. He points out that 48% of the two-person households and 37% of the four-person households do not have to make additional payments. In addition, the Osterholz district shines with a high recycling rate for organic waste and waste paper, which makes the average residual waste bin easier than anywhere else.

A sorting analysis from 2021 also showed that over 31% of the weight of the residual waste bin consists of organic kitchen waste. This shows that the district is on a good course when it comes to waste separation. Schauer announced that the KAW is planning an advertising campaign to promote the organic bin in order to get even more households to switch from yellow sacks to yellow tons. But ongoing legal proceedings could question these plans.

EU guidelines and future prospects

Another point that should not be missing in the discussion is to comply with the "Clean Vehicles Directive" of the EU. This obliges all the actors involved to reduce the diesel share of new vehicles from 2025. In this context, ASO managing director Christof von Schroetter plans to introduce a mix of technology for the vehicle fleet, which also includes electrical and synthetic fuels.

While the discussion about the garbage fees is worried, it remains to be seen which measures are ultimately taken to find a balance between fair fees and incentives to avoid waste. However, the differences in various bonus-malus systems in Europe, which extend from liberalized regulations to heavily regulated systems, show that solutions are not always easy to find. As in the car insurance, motivation to change behavior is crucial in order to achieve the desired results.