Freiburg municipal council plans to reform the packaging tax

A majority in the Freiburg municipal council wants to reform the controversial packaging tax. The factions of SPD+JF, A City for All (ESFA), CDU, FDP/Citizens for Freiburg (BfF) and Free Voters are requesting a “compromise and new start,” as they jointly announced. In the future, they want to initially limit the tax to disposable cups instead of covering a large number of different to-go packaging, as was previously the case.

The political groups justify the initiative by saying that the current regulation is too complicated, incomprehensible for many citizens and involves a disproportionate amount of bureaucratic effort for companies. In addition, there is often a lack of practical reusable alternatives. However, such alternatives are already established for beverage cups.

At the same time, the parliamentary groups wanted to significantly expand reusable funding - with the aim of a city-wide reusable system in which catering establishments can participate easily and cost-effectively. Reusables should therefore become mandatory in urban facilities such as pools in the future.

Application for the upcoming council meeting

According to the parliamentary groups, the application should be submitted at the next local council meeting on October 20th. After Tübingen and Konstanz, the tax on disposable packaging was also passed by the local council in Freiburg and came into force at the beginning of the year.

The new regulation caused discussion and dissatisfaction among both restaurateurs and citizens. Among other things, what was criticized by many was the lack of clarity regarding the guidelines. For example, the tax currently applies to the packaging of warm food - but in many cases not to cold food. Likewise, the packaging for delivered food is not affected by the tax. In the city, disposable cutlery, straws and packaging cost between 20 and 70 cents each.