By Catherine Brown
With more than 200,000 members, Germany's Friends of the Earth is one of the largest of any country. Arno Behlau, its international spokesperson, talked with Green Left Weekly in Bonn about issues facing the German environmental movement.
For many, picturing Germany is to imagine the magnificent Rhine weaving its way through picturesque green hills scattered with old castles. But in 1986 the Rhine was declared ecologically dead after a fire at the Sadox chemical plant in Switzerland caused tonnes of highly toxic pesticides to pour into its waters.
Pressure by environmental groups, including FoE, resulted in a massive clean-up. "Today the Rhine is much cleaner than it was 20 years ago", Behlau says, explaining that this is due to the clean-up and to legislation that put more taxes on industry to pay for sewage plants and imposed further controls on their outflows.
But while some biologists claim the river is now fit for the return of salmon, Behlau says, "If you found salmon in its waters, I suspect it would be one that had lost its way. It is still not an ecologically clean river." The last wild salmon was caught in the Rhine in 1958.
"By law, industry has to measure all outflow of industry sewage and chemicals. We say this is not enough; these measures should be taken by an independent group, not industry itself. Once in a while the administrative bodies do run a check. But they announce their coming first, giving industry time to stop the outflow of chemicals."
Pollution comes also from agricultural fertilisers and pesticides. High levels of polychlorinated biphenyls are found in some fish.
In former East Germany, only half of the municipalities had a sewage treatment plant. Dresden, with a population of half a million, discharged its entire sewage untreated directly into the Elbe River. Prior to East Germany's annexation by West Germany, the Elbe waters carried into the sea annually 22.5 tonnes of mercury and 124 tonnes of lead, to name only some of its toxic pollutants.
With annexation in 1990, the major pollution sites were closed, and a clean-up of the Elbe was begun.
"Many discharges have been cut", Behlau stated "though some is due to the fall in production. Toxic materials in the Elbe have declined significantly." Greenpeace and FoE are still campaigning for the government to get tough on industries responsible for polluting rivers.
Packaging
Klaus Topfer, the environment minister, has initiated legislation referred to as the "circulation economy" law. FoE is having a big fight with Duales System Deutschland, the company trying to introduce the circulation economy.
Behlau described the way the system is to work: there will be yellow bins everywhere in which consumers are to place packaging identified with a green spot; DSD is then to ensure its recycling. "This is not waste management by the community but total waste management by industry, and you supposedly don't have to pay for it.
"So industry says put everything with the green spot in the yellow bins and we guarantee it will be recycled. However, there are several lies in this. The system is not free; it is calculated the cost for consumers annually is 200-300 deutschmarks."
Consumers are told DSD will dispose of all packaging, but there was a scandal in August, when dumps in France were found containing German waste packaging with the green spots.
Another scandal, only a couple of weeks later, involved two waste control companies, now being investigated for dumping medical waste in France.
Ten trucks crossing the French border were escorted back to Germany after used syringes, blood packages and dialysis equipment were found disguised as household rubbish. Following this, the French government announced that controls at the border had been tightened to prevent shipment of illegal waste.
This highlights dangers FoE see in the "circulation economy"."DSD, by putting the green spot on the product, is giving waste another meaning. They say it is no longer waste, that it is a commodity and therefore has worth. Therefore the strict regulations that apply to waste can not be used any more. We feel this gives a lot of possibilities to people to dump waste around Europe.
"We want to reduce the amount of waste, not by recycling in the first place, but by reducing the waste at the point of production. This means you have to think very carefully about how
you are going to design your product to ensure from beginning to end you are ecologically sane. This means for packaging it should be reusable, for example bottles and not cartons and plastics.
"The green spot misleads consumers who think they are doing something for the environment, when it would be better to use returnable packaging."
Greenhouse gases
FoE operates independent associations in each of the 16 German Lõnder (states) and an overall federal association based in Bonn. There are more than 2000 local groups in communities.
Behlau sees it as important that local groups can decide their own priorities, adding that of course Bonn tries to give them input on a broader scale. A good example of this is the climate campaign started after the Earth Summit in Rio.
It was initiated, explained Behlau, to help people understand that they have to reduce their energy consumption and how they can do it. This campaign has worked well at a local level.
Eighteen months ago the Kohl government passed legislation with the aim of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 25-30% by the year 2005. Behlau says this impressed many outside Germany, but "we see what's actually happening, or rather what isn't happening. When you look behind the curtains, you can't see any move towards it yet."
Recent German studies and industry itself claim a reduction by only 17% is achievable. Behlau disputes this, claiming a total review of the government's energy policy is required, along with changes in transport that are quite easy to achieve.
"Germany is about the only country in the world without a speed limit. We claim a limit of 100 kilometres on the autobahns, 80 on country roads and 30 in the cities would bring an immediate and significant reduction in CO2 emissions. Nobody dares touch the German pet, the car.
"If you look at houses in Germany, 80% are badly insulated.
"So if the government took the right measures you could do more than 30%, but this is not politically acceptable. It is all very well for Kohl and Topfer to shine on the international stage, but we need concrete measures to be taken, and they haven't."
Too many cars
Another campaign FoE groups have started is around traffic. Germany, with a population of 80 million, has a total of 33 million private vehicles and 1 million trucks. This gives it the highest vehicle density in the world. "You could say one in two Germans, including babies, own a car", commented Behlau.
"Increasingly, communities are understanding that what the environment movement said 10 or even 15 years ago was right. We're starting to see city borders closed to car traffic — you can bring your car so far and then you have to use public transport.
" We are fighting for higher taxes, on the car itself and on petrol, so that people who want to use their car have to pay more to do so."
Behlau discussed the German Greens and the aftermath of their electoral defeat in 1990. "The latest polls indicate that if an election was held tomorrow the Greens would return to the Bundestag with around 8 to 9%. I think they lost their electoral support due to the general 'greening up' in Germany.
"The work done by the environmental groups, like FoE, through the '60s, '70s and '80s put a lot of pressure on politics. The environment these days is something every politician and political party says they care about. All promise to take measures to protect the environment; even if you listen to industry, it too says it cares.
"However, the Greens wanted structural changes, unlike the others. So many people felt that, with the legislative changes and the improvements that had already been won, we don't need the Greens any more — especially, as the Social Democratic Party talked a lot about concern for the environment."
Behlau thinks support will shift back to the Greens, as people realise more changes are required. "We can't go on with end of the pipe techniques, simply putting in more filters or only cleaning up afterwards.
"We need to go to the source, to think of our consumption first. When you do, you very quickly come to the need for structural changes. Without changes in this direction, the planet will become a desert."