At the beginning of the year, the state capital of Düsseldorf set new course for waste management and city cleaning. This will result in better service for Düsseldorf residents from 2025 and, with the introduction of the new recycling bin, expanded options for reducing residual waste.
“The citizens of the state capital will benefit from the reorganization of waste management at the turn of the year. For example, the paper and organic waste bins will be emptied more frequently. In addition, new options for waste disposal will be made possible – and all this while maintaining stable costs,” said Mayor Dr. Stephan Keller.
“Until now, many people have often had difficulty deciding which waste belongs in the yellow bin. We have successfully simplified this by replacing the yellow bin with the new recycling bin next year,” explains Jochen Kral, Head of Mobility and the Environment, and continues, “this new offer enables households to reduce the proportion of residual waste and thus have a better influence on the fees they have to pay.”
This changes with the tons
The “yellow bin” will become a recycling bin from January 1, 2025. So-called “non-packaging of the same material” should also be put in this bin. This is waste made of metal or plastic, e.g. broken cooking utensils, watering cans, etc., which is not packaging.
As of April 1, the frequency of emptying the “blue bin” for waste paper will be increased from fortnightly to weekly. This will make it easier for Düsseldorf households to dispose of waste paper.
From April 1st, the organic waste bin will also be emptied weekly instead of every two weeks as before – with the exception of the winter months of December, January and February, when it will be emptied every two weeks as before. Another new feature is that in future kitchen waste “after cooking” will also be disposed of in the free organic waste bin, which will reduce the volume of residual waste.
New payment method
From January 1, 2025, AWISTA GmbH will no longer collect the fees on behalf of the city; instead, the city itself will collect the fees for garbage collection and street cleaning. This also applies to residual waste bins used for commercial purposes. The 2025 fee notices will be sent out by the city in January 2025. The debt collection process will then also be carried out by the city. The IT systems used for other fee items will be used for this purpose. The structure of the waste fees (with basic fee, service fee, partial service discount and full service surcharge) will remain unchanged. There will also be no changes to the calculation of the street cleaning fees based on the existing cleaning classes.
However, the payment method will change for customers. If payments are processed by direct debit, new SEPA mandates must be issued. All customers will be written to with appropriate explanations in autumn 2024. The fee notices themselves will also contain this information. They will also be provided with QR codes, which means that payments can be processed very easily online or, alternatively, a SEPA mandate can be conveniently issued online.
Background:
Following completion of the tendering process for the reorganization of waste management in Düsseldorf, the administration and AWISTA GmbH are intensively preparing for the takeover of tasks in the areas of waste management and city cleaning with winter service by the new company AWISTA Kommunal GmbH on January 1, 2025.
The council took note of the objectives of the service provision with submission AÖE/074/2021 at its meeting on December 16, 2021, and the result of the tendering process was communicated to the AÖE at its meeting on February 26, 2024 as a communication from the administration, TOP Ö 5.1. With resolution AÖE/018/2023, the council also decided at its meeting on April 20, 2023 to “repurpose” the yellow bin as a recycling bin. With the introduction of the recycling bin, the city itself will be responsible for recycling 20 percent of the waste collected in the recycling bin from January 1, 2025.
