Schillchaos in the Nordpark Erfurt: gardener fights for clean areas!

Schillchaos in the Nordpark Erfurt: gardener fights for clean areas!

in Erfurt's Nordpark, one of the largest leisure and green areas in the city, is a recurring problem: the garbage. When the weekends end, many visitors, including families, joggers, dog owners and cyclists, leave not only memories, but also a lot of waste in nature. Anke Hornig, landscape gardener in the park, begins her everyday work with the collecting of garbage before devoting herself to the actual gardener work. "Everything is simply thrown into the landscape," she criticizes and gives examples: children's shoes, a bike bike, car tires, spray boxes and empty egg boxes are just a few of the legacies that are often found in the park MDR.

In addition, the situation is tightened by local pizzerias that deliver their dishes to the parks and thus contribute to the garbage flood. In order to counteract this, the city of Erfurt has set up special pizza carton collection containers. Unfortunately, these are popular with the citizens: only to a limited extent - two out of six installed containers had to be dismantled. In Weimar, on the other hand, where similar collection containers are tested, the response is positive. These extra containers are constructed in such a way that they can prevent rain and only absorb pizza boxes, which should defuse the problem of the prevailing waste of waste. Gardeners of the garden and cemetery office are commissioned to emphasize the collection containers, and the city administration is looking forward to feedback from the citizens for the efficiency of this approach. Suggestions for locations for other containers are desired and can be sent to Gartenamt@erfurt.de, as Erfurt.de.

waste avoidance as a goal

The city of Erfurt takes up an essential environmental policy goal, which is also important at the German level: the promotion of the circular economy. According to [Federal Environment Agency] (https://www.umweltbundeamt.de/themen/ Abfall-dalletourcen/ Abfallwirtschaft/ Abfall avoidance), the amount of waste is to be reduced in order to minimize environmental and health-threatening effects. A sophisticated waste avoidance program based on the waste framework of the waste framework and the circular economy law aims to decouple economic growth from the generation of waste.

Some measures to avoid waste have already been launched, including a project to raise awareness of various actors and the development of indicators for evaluation of success. The waste avoidance program primarily promotes the increased cooperation of everyone involved, because without joint action it will be difficult to get the garbage problem under control. The goal is to reduce food waste by 50 percent by 2030.

Anke Hornig has another proposal for reducing garbage: she pleads to introduce a deposit system for waste such as pizza boxes. "This could create an incentive to decently dispose of things," emphasizes the gardener. With a firm view of the nature that surrounds us, it remains to be hoped that both project approaches and the active participation of the citizens: inside and our beloved Nordpark in Erfurt will be cleaner again.