A small city in Germany took on McDonald’s in court and won, and now cities around the world are paying very close attention. Tübingen, a charming medieval university town in southwestern Germany, was drowning in disposable takeout trash, with paper coffee cups stuffed into every bin and pizza boxes piling up on centuries-old church steps after busy weekends. So the city tried something bold: a small fee on every piece of throwaway packaging sold at restaurants and cafes, from burger wrappers to plastic forks and straws. Just 50 cents per container and 20 cents per piece of cutlery, a number small enough to feel totally manageable but apparently just annoying enough to make people genuinely stop and think twice before grabbing something disposable.
McDonald’s was not pleased, and the fast food giant fought the policy all the way to Germany’s highest court, arguing that the city had no legal right to charge the fee at all. The courts disagreed twice in a row, and those rulings opened the door for other German cities to follow Tübingen’s lead with confidence. Four years after the tax rolled out, the results are hard to argue with: the use of reusable containers in the city has quadrupled, three quarters of local eateries have cut back on single-use packaging, and city workers confirm there is simply less litter scattered across the streets. The tax has raised over a million euros in a single year, all funneled back into street cleaning, waste programs, and grants helping small businesses make the switch to reusable systems. At least 155 other German cities are now exploring the same approach, and early figures from the first neighboring city to adopt it show total waste dropping by nearly five percent in just its first year.
Source: https://reasonstobecheerful.world/tubingen-germany-defied-mcdonalds-dumped-to-go-waste/
