Green Dot (symbol)

The Green Dot (German: Der Grüne Punkt) is the license symbol of a European network of industry-funded systems for recycling the packaging materials of consumer goods. The logo is trademark protected worldwide.

The Green Dot was a system thought up by Klaus Töpfer, Germany's environment minister in the early 1990s. The basic idea of the Green Dot is that consumers who see the logo know that the manufacturer of the product contributes to the cost of recovery and recycling. This can be with household waste collected by the authorities (e.g. in special bags - in Germany these are yellow), or in containers in public places such as car parks and outside supermarkets.

The system is financed by the green dot licence fee paid by the producers of the products. Fees vary by country and are based on the material used in packaging (e.g. paper, plastic, metal, wood, cardboard). Each country also has different fees for joining the scheme and ongoing fixed and variable fees. Fees also take into account the cost of collection, sorting and recycling methods.

In simple terms, the system encourages manufacturers to cut down on packaging as this saves them the cost of licence fees.

In 1991, the German government passed a packaging law (Verpackungsverordnung) that requires manufacturers to take care of the recycling or disposal of any packaging material they sell. As a result of this law, German industry set up a "dual system" of waste collection, which picks up household packaging in parallel to the existing municipal waste-collection systems. This industry-funded system is operated in Germany by the Duales System Deutschland GmbH (German for "Dual System Germany Ltd") corporation, or short DSD.

DSD only collects packaging material from manufacturers who pay a license fee to DSD. DSD license fee payers can then add the Green Dot logo to their package labeling to indicate that this package should be placed into the separate yellow bags or yellow wheelie bins that will then be collected and emptied by DSD-operated waste collection vehicles and sorted (and where possible recycled) in DSD facilities.

German licence fees are calculated using the weight of packs, each material type used and the volumes of product produced per annum.

Worldwide stewardship of the Green Dot logo is managed by PRO Europe (Packaging Recovery Organisation Europe) on behalf of the various national Green dot organizations across Europe.

The design of the Green Dot symbol has obvious links with the Chinese Taijitu (yin and yang) symbol and Gary Anderson's recycling symbol. Where full-color printing is available, its official form is printed in a light and a dark shade of green (Pantone 366C and 343C). For cost reasons or to avoid a visual clash with other symbols, many manufacturers chose a black-and-white or other color combination on their packages.

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Wikipedia