According to the German recycling organisation, Duales System Deutschland AG, the carbon dioxide savings represent the quantity of the gas generated each year by 64,000 households when burning 2,000 litres of heating oil each, and results from an energy saving of 33 billion megajoules.
Last year, Germans produced 3.6% more lightweight packaging than the previous year, which was partly accounted for by a big increase in plastic packaging. As a result of improved automatic sorting equipment and processes, plastic packaging recycling increased by 10% in 2001, so that – for the first time – more recycled plastic was used in manufacture than raw material.
However, during the year, each German citizen disposed of an average of 76.6 kilograms of total packaging waste to recycling, showing a slight decline.