Germany’s harsh fines for littering are the result of more and more waste being dumped in forests or on city streets. The cost of cleaning up illegally dumped waste amounted to more than €12 million last year, according to estimates by German MP Lars Bocian. The authorities have decided to significantly increase fines for people who are caught polluting the environment. The new fines could prove to be very severe. And rightly so!
Currently, you can receive a fine of €55 (approx. PLN 250) for discarding a cigarette butt on the street. Soon, this penalty will increase and will be almost 5 times higher. For a discarded “cigarette” you will pay as much as 250 euros, or more than 1,000 zlotys.
Bags of rubbish abandoned in the forest will be valued at €500 per bag. If someone is caught dumping tyres in the forest, they will be fined between €800 and €3,500 for each tyre, depending on its size, or between €3,500 and up to €15,000 per tyre.
Even more will be paid by ‘litterers’ who abandon waste that is difficult to dispose of or hazardous waste. Here, fines can run into hundreds of thousands of zlotys. Up to 100 kilograms of abandoned rubble, its dishonest owner will pay a fine of €25,000 (PLN 110,000), and each additional 100 kilograms of rubble will be valued at another €22,000. Thus, if someone abandons 300 kilograms of rubble they will pay a fine of €69,000, or almost PLN 300,000.
However, that is not all. If the dumped waste includes hazardous waste, the person who dumped it will pay an additional 65,000 euros (280,000 zlotys), and if it is found that the person has already been convicted of the same act (recidivism), the fine will be 85,000 euros (370,000 zlotys).
“This is a deliberate action and as necessary as possible. Many millions of taxpayers’ money is spent on the disposal of illegally dumped waste,” said the MP. It is now estimated in Germany that last year these costs amounted to almost 12 million euros.” – MP Lars Bocian, who drafted the new catalogue of penalties in the CDU parliamentary group, said for the Bild journalist.
The money from fines is to be used, among other things, for the expansion of monitoring and more effective controls. In comparison, littering fines have also increased in Poland from September 2022. Currently in Poland, the lowest stipulated fine for littering is PLN 500 to PLN 5,000 (e.g. for throwing away a cigarette butt). The situation is different in the case of litter abandoned on a larger scale, in which case the penalty can be much higher, including restriction of freedom.
source: https: //www.bild.de/
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