Aluminum, pet and residual waste Basel wants passers-by to separate their waste - 20 new bins installed
From today, passers-by in Basel city center can dispose of PET bottles and aluminum cans separately. The city is testing whether recycling in public spaces is worthwhile at 20 locations.
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- Basel is launching a pilot project with additional recycling bins in the city center.
- PET beverage bottles and aluminum beverage cans will be collected.
- The city is examining the costs, effort, collection quantity and quality of the recyclable materials until fall 2026.
Basel has added recycling bins to the public waste bins in the city center. As announced by the Department of Construction and Transport, additional bins for PET beverage bottles and aluminum beverage cans will be installed at 20 high-traffic locations from Monday.
The pilot trial will run from summer 2026 until the fall. The Civil Engineering Office wants to find out how much effort and cost is involved in emptying the bins. It will also measure how much PET and aluminum is collected and how clean the recyclables remain.
Only worthwhile if waste is clean
The sticking point is the purity of the separated waste: according to the press release, the collected recyclable materials cannot be recycled if the proportion of impurities is over ten percent. This value depends heavily on the behavior of the users, the location and the time of day.
The new collection points are mainly located in large squares in the city center. These include Barfüsserplatz, Claraplatz, Marktplatz, Messeplatz, Münsterplatz, Theaterplatz and Wettsteinplatz. The department has deliberately decided not to set up collection points on the banks of the Rhine because recyclables were heavily contaminated there in previous trials.
Ordinary Basel waste bins are used, which have been newly labeled and illustrated. Sensors report the fill level to the city cleaning service so that the bins can be emptied efficiently. The PET and aluminum bags are collected by vans, temporarily stored and then handed over to a recycling service provider.