Bag fee (Switzerland)

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The bag fee is included in the purchase price for the official garbage bag. Here is the example of Basel.

The bag fee (or rubbish bag fee ) is a levy for usage based financing of the disposal of waste . It is usually confiscated when buying the specially colored garbage bags, but waste stickers are also used, which can be stuck to neutral bags. The rubbish bag fee covers the costs for the collection, transport and disposal (usually incineration) of the waste contained in the rubbish bag. The levy supplements the basic fee imposed on the property owners and passed on to the tenants via ancillary costs, which covers the costs for the separate collections. The sack fee was introduced for the first time in Switzerland in 1975 in the city of St. Gallen and some neighboring communities. Since then, it has been used in all German-speaking municipalities in Switzerland (the last was Killwangen from the beginning of 2017) and in the majority of municipalities in Latin Switzerland.

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The sack fee is a polluter-pays waste fee that makes the costs for disposal directly visible and thus offers a strong incentive to avoid waste and to recycle recyclable goods. Significantly more recyclable waste (glass, tinplate , aluminum, PET , PE milk bottles, paper, newspapers, cardboard, oil, clothes, shoes, batteries, lights, PCs, household appliances, etc.) is collected in places with bag fees than in others. If you dispose of your waste separately, you reduce the amount of household garbage that has to be incinerated, save money and enable meaningful recycling with the least possible effort - the metal, for example, then does not have to be laboriously recovered in the incinerator.

Collection of the fee

Bag fees for household waste are collected in different ways, depending on the municipality:

  1. Special garbage bags with volume-based (17, 35, 60 or 110 liter) bag fees already included in the purchase price
  2. Revenue stamps also with volume-based (17, 35, 60 or 110 liter) bag fees for garbage bags already included in the purchase price
  3. Weighing system on the collection vehicle and collection of the fee from the household based on the weight of the bags

In most cases, waste from companies is weighed on the collection vehicle and the fee is charged to the company based on the weight.

The basis for the sack fee is the Federal Environmental Protection Act, which came into force in 1985.

Charge bags and tokens are available in local grocery stores; Brands often also with the local government.

There are large price differences between the municipalities.

Negative effects and countermeasures

After the introduction it could be observed that people dump their household waste in paper bins in public parks etc. Such “wild disposal” is usually punished, whereby the so-called “Güsel Police” can occasionally convict the perpetrators based on the remains. Violations are fined differently according to the valid (municipal) waste ordinance.

Mandatory federal law

Not all municipalities in Switzerland introduced the fee independently - as ultimately decreed by the Federal Supreme Court ; some were forced by their cantons, others tried in 2013 to postpone the introduction of the fee. On May 21, 2017, a referendum against the nationwide introduction of the rubbish bag fee was rejected in a referendum in the canton of Ticino . Only the canton of Geneva has not yet introduced the sack fee.

Germany

In Germany close to the border, some cities have also introduced a sack fee.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ View: Federalism on the roadside: Switzerland and its fee bags . ( blick.ch [accessed on August 14, 2018]).
  2. ↑ SAEFL : The bag fee from the perspective of local people and communities , of 2003.
  3. ↑ https://www.aargauerzeitung.ch/aargau/fricktal/sackgebuehren- Zwischen-den-gemeinden-gibt-es-grosse-preisdifferenzen- 129181945
  4. ↑ Federal court decision in 2011 on the bag fee
  5. ^ Canton St.Gallen acted for its communities
  6. ↑ Remarkable reasons for resisting the bag fee
  7. ↑ Zeno Zoccatelli, Samuel Jaberg: When Swiss people dispose of their rubbish across the border. In: swissinfo.ch . April 26, 2018. Retrieved April 28, 2019 .
  8. ↑ https://www.suedkurier.de/region/hochrhein/kreis-waldshut/Restmuell-wird-2020-teurer-Grundgebuehr-und-Leerungen-der-Muelltonnen-kosten-kuenftig-mehr;art372586,10378977
  9. ↑ https://www.buesingen.de/ceasy/resource/?id=1971&download=1