Green Germany

Recycling is huge in Germany! However, this environmental battle was a bit overwhelming at first. This is how it was explained to me:

To begin with, the packaging is more environmentally friendly due to the Green Dot system. Manufacturers and retailers have to pay for a "Green Dot" on products: the more packaging there is, the higher the fee. This clever system has led to less paper, thinner glass and less metal being used, thus creating less garbage to be recycled. The net result: a drastic decline of about one million tons less garbage than normal every year.
From there the people of Germany do their big with the proper sorting of garbage.

Glass: Most has a deposit or "Pfand", much like the 5 cent return in parts of the states. This gets returned to the shop for money. The rest of non-returnable bottles, wine bottles, jam/preserve jars, oil bottles, and juice bottles, get sorted by color. There are separate slots for green, brown and clear class. These bins are somewhere in every neighborhood. The other bins are usually at their doorstep or for apartments, in a shed nearby. These bins are color coded; green, yellow, brown and gray.

Green: all packaging made of paper and cardboard, newspapers, magazines, waste paper, paper bags, etc.

Yellow: Cans, plastic, polystyrene, aluminum, tinplate and "composite" materials like beverage cartons made of a mixture of materials belong in the yellow bin. Empty spray cans are also allowed here. You are not supposed to put stuff inside each other, like the yogurt cup inside the baked beans tin. This stuff is sorted by hand, so a thought for the end process is always considerate.

Brown: Biological stuff is anything destined for the compost heap in a good gardener's back yard. This includes kitchen scraps, peels, leftover food, coffee filters, tea bags and garden waste. The end result of bio recycling is either energy through the natural fermenting gasses, which is captured and utilized, or garden compost.

Gray: This bin is also the destiny of, finally, "almost the rest". This includes ash, cigarette butts, old household objects like hairbrushes and frying pans, textiles and nylon stockings, diapers, tissues, other personal hygiene items, extremely dirty paper, etc. Everything in the gray bins will be incinerated.

Misc: "the rest", i.e. the stuff that did not feature anywhere else. That is the hazardous waste, which includes fluorescent tubes, batteries and acids, cans of paint still containing paint, thinners, adhesives, corrosives, disinfectants, insecticides, and so forth, has to be treated as hazardous waste. There is a site by the local town council where a truck collects this kind of waste periodically.
Local shopping areas usually have bins for recycling batteries, cell phones, eyeglasses and such.

If you are still left with something you would like to throw away (can you imagine?!) and do not think that it belongs on the "Trödelmarkt" (fleamarket), you have the opportunity at certain announced times to place your stuff outside when Sonstige Müll (miscellaneous items) will be gathered. This could include a sofa, broken hi-fi, chairs, building materials, etc. The funny thing is that not much of this stuff ends up on the garbage dump since many second hand dealers or "collectors" drive round the neighborhood to inspect the thrown out stuff. The majority of it gets loaded into private vans long before the municipal vans come around!
Despite the extra effort and diligence required by First World Recycling, it does provide a sense of pride to know that you actually managed to figure out the German recycling system - something for your résumé, no doubt!