German Advancements in Green Living

By: Sandra Stoner

Standing in the Customs and Immigration line last night at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, my mind starting wandering back to the wonderful vacation we had in Nuremberg, Germany over the weekend. Seeing the historic sites, visiting Christkindlesmarkt, and watching “Flocke” the baby polar bear play in Nuremberg’s Tiergarten (zoo), were all of course highlights of our trip, but so were our realizations that Germany is much farther ahead of the United States in terms of being environmentally friendly.

Take for example the fact that in Germany’s grocery stores, plastic bags are not for free. Customers have to pay around .50 cents in euros (about $0.65) to purchase even a single one. As a result the majority of shoppers bring their own cloth bags to pack their groceries in.

Or the fact that many escalators remain stationary or move extremely slowly until you place a foot on them, when they quickly begin to zip faster and escort you up or down. This obviously saves countless energy that is normally wasted.

I could go on and on about the simple things that we noticed in Germany that have the possibility to make a big difference. In fact, I think I will…

Recyclable trashcans are everywhere. And I don’t just mean the ones that you can throw glass, newspapers, and plastic bottles all together in, but instead individual ones labeled specifically for “brown glass,” “green glass,” “paper,” etc. They are easy to get to and make it much more convenient to recycle, as no one has to go out of their way to properly dispose of yesterday’s newspaper.

Lights in hotel hallways turn on automatically when you walk through them, and then shut off after you’ve closed the door to your room.

Doors on trains and busses do not open unless you wave your hand in front of a sensor. So at each stop you don’t have cold air rushing in to kick the heat on higher, nor does any power need to be used when no one in your car is getting off at Marienstrasse. Honestly, the simplicity of it is genius.

Speaking of public transportation, Germany has it, a lot of it. The town that we were in, Nuremberg, has about 500,000 people. It is by no means a big city, but more like a suburban area in the United States. But it would crush Chicago, a city of 3 million people, in a public transportation contest.

Chicago has a bus system, an El system for trains within the city, and a Metra system for trains connecting the suburbs to the loop.

Nuremberg has a bus system, a trolley system, a U-Bahn (subway within the city), a S-Bahn (trains connecting regional cities), and trains connecting it to virtually any other city in the European Union. These are all extremely easy to get access to (even for tourists who have never been there before in their lives) and even better, are cheap.

So what did I learn on my vacation to Nuremberg? Of course I discovered that I love to eat Lebkuchen (gingerbread), consume meter-long sausages, and ride trolleys. But even more importantly, I learned that environmentally friendly solutions are so simple and even better, possible. Come on USA, lets get a move on and catch up with the EU!