Swiss Collect Surplus of Recyclable Materials

World champions in recycling, the thrifty Swiss are collecting more valuable waste than they can handle.

Symbols of the nation’s steadily rising drive to reuse can be seen on most any street: neatly tied bundles of old newspapers and bags of used clothes are regularly piled on sidewalks for collection. Consumers dump used glass in a nationwide network of blue steel containers, often located at supermarkets.

Tossing in a shopping bag’s worth of bottles has become practically second nature for the beer- and wine-loving Swiss.

One Geneva foreign resident recounts he once put down a load of empty bottles while briefly returning to his car. Meanwhile, a man who happened to walk past dropped them into a nearby container.

Why do the Swiss save things that others more often consider garbage? Environmental concerns, a tradition of self-sufficiency in a small, landlocked country with few natural resources and a highly developed transport network are some explanations.

Colors Separated

“The Swiss are becoming increasingly environment-conscious,” said Albert Weiss, director of Vetrorecycling, Switzerland’s sole glass bottle recycler. The company commends “an intelligent and disciplined population.”

Most bottles carry deposits, usually 50 centimes, or about 35 cents, and are returned to bottling plants via stores. To combat the rising mountain of household garbage, the Swiss milk industry will replace cardboard cartons with old-fashioned returnable bottles for a six-month trial this fall.

Non-return bottles usually land in recycling containers, to which virtually all of Switzerland’s 6.5 million people have easy access. Most separate colors into green, brown and transparent.

About three-quarters of all glass bottles and jars in Switzerland are recycled. Last year, 140,000 metric tons were brought back, up 53% from 1981.

“We motivated consumers from the start by paying local communities for old glass--$5.7 million (8 million Swiss francs) a year--and publishing collection results,” Weiss says of a program launched in 1972.

But the Swiss, who also consume French wine and German beer, have an annual glass surplus pile of several thousand tons. Last month, the first Swiss factory turning powdered old glass into insulating foam began operation.

Paper Reused

On another front, local activists have launched collection drives for bottles made from a new type of plastic that can be reprocessed into foil or fibers.

Old clothes find a new life, too. At least twice yearly, all Swiss household receive colored plastic bags with an appeal to donate used jackets, dresses, socks and shoes that are clean and wearable.

Some 15,000 tons were collected last year and one-third was shipped to less developed countries. Most of the rest is sold second-hand or recycled into yarn and, for example, dishrags.

“No other European country is as organized and intensive,” said Beat Alder, head of Texaid, which coordinates six of the nine collection organizations.

Paper is reused again and again in this country where supermarket grocery bags cost 14 cents each.

Some 553,000 tons of used paper and cardboard were retrieved last year. Swiss industry didn’t need it all, despite using the highest proportion of recycled paper in the world, 44%. Exports, generally to neighboring countries, rose 18%.

Thriftiness and social welfare are combined by the state telecommunications monopoly PTT, which sells old telephone books brought back by customers to recyclers. The proceeds bought 455 radios and televisions for the handicapped and elderly last year.

Aluminum recycling is not big in Switzerland, mainly because few drinks are sold in cans and too little is collected for economical reuse, said Hans-Peter Fahrni of the Federal Environmental Protection Office.

But meanwhile, old engine oil is used in the cement industry. The town of Moudon has a factory that turns household waste into construction bricks. And more than half of all garbage is burned at plants that generate heat for Swiss homes.