Berlin, so dirty and grey: Now the Senate wants to take tough action

The Berlin Senate is introducing a drastically more expensive catalogue of fines: construction debris on the side of the road can cost 25,000 euros, and a discarded cigarette butt can cost 250 euros.

Berlin street scene with local garbage Schöning/imago

Peter Fox sings about Berlin:

Good morning Berlin, you can be so uglySo dirty and greyYou can be so beautifully horribleYour nights are eating me upIt will probably be best for meI go home and get some sleepAnd while I walk through the streets

Slowly turns black to blue

Lotto King Karl sings about Hamburg:

Hamburg my pearl, you beautiful city, you my home, you are my life

You are the city I can count on, I can count on

Petra Nelken, spokeswoman for Environment Senator Ute Bonde (CDU), sums it up: “Hamburg has citizens, Berlin has residents.”

What's meant is the way people treat their city, especially the annoying and, incidentally, outrageous habit of leaving their trash lying around everywhere. Berlin is dirty—so dirty that it annoys many people. And it's expensive. The Berlin City Cleaning Service (BSR) billed the state of Berlin almost ten million euros in 2023 for the disposal of illegal waste.

Against this backdrop, the CDU/CSU-SPD coalition had long intended to take more rigorous action against such illegal waste disposal and make the city cleaner. At the end of last year, the CDU and SPD introduced a motion to the House of Representatives calling for significantly higher fines—along with a demand that the Senate implement them. The coalition argued that higher financial penalties would at least dampen the urge to commit crimes for personal gain. And the revenue could be used to finance measures to monitor relevant waste dumping sites, for example, using cameras.

Now the state of Berlin is making an attempt to improve the situation and collect more money from the polluters themselves. The Senate wants to make the city cleaner. One step toward this goal is a new catalog of fines, which the Berlin state government approved at its meeting on Tuesday. This catalog stipulates that illegal dumping of waste in Berlin will be significantly more expensive than before. Furthermore, the catalog is to be expanded.

First, the Council of Mayors must give its approval; after all, it is the district regulatory authorities that are responsible for illegal waste. Once approved, nothing stands in the way of publication in the official gazette—then the catalog can come into force.

Berlin's garbage: A discarded cigarette butt could cost 250 euros in the future

Some of the new fines listed are truly drastic. Anyone who illegally disposes of construction waste up to 100 kilograms, for example, will be fined €25,000 in the future. According to the responsible Senate Environmental Administration, graduated fines apply for illegal bulky waste disposal, depending on the size and volume. The fine for smaller bulky waste is between €1,500 and €4,000. For one cubic meter or 100 kilograms, the fine is between €4,000 and €8,000. For more than one cubic meter or more than 100 kilograms, the fine is between €8,000 and €11,000. Electrical appliances and bulky waste containing pollutants can cost between €1,000 and €15,000.

While these offenses often involve commercial waste, where companies simply want to save on disposal costs, much other garbage on the street is clearly of private origin. And even here, it can be expensive. For example, dumping a mattress on the side of the road will be punished with a fine starting at €100, according to the Senate resolution. Anyone dumping old tires illegally in the countryside can expect a fine of €700 per tire.

But it can also be addressed on a smaller scale. Carelessly discarded cigarette butts, which pose a real fire hazard and pollute the environment with their water-soluble pollutants, will in future be punished with a fine starting at €250. Disposable cups, drink packets, or packaging material could in future be subject to a fine starting at €250. Even for dog waste not being disposed of or dog waste bags being left lying around, the fine would be noticeably higher, with a fine of up to €350.

Berlin waste disposal fees: The question remains as to who should control them

But it's not that simple. It's much more likely that, instead of substantial fines, a so-called warning fine will be imposed much more frequently. If anything happens, the litterer has to be caught in the act by the respective district's public order office. The warning fine for a cigarette butt thrown on the ground, for example, can be as high as €55. In the future, the fine for dog excrement that isn't removed will be €80 instead of €55. The city's famous "Free to Give Away" boxes also fall into this category.

The public order office makes the decision on its own authority. In many cases, the initial warning will be issued. Repeat offenses can be very costly.

According to a Senate statement, the update to the catalog of fines was necessary due to the mandatory reusable offering for on-the-go portioned food and beverages, which has been in effect since the beginning of 2023. Anyone who fails to offer reusable cups for on-the-go beverages in a sales area of more than 80 square meters now faces a fine of €750, or even more in individual cases.

Environment Senator Bonde considers the update an "important building block for achieving greater cleanliness in Berlin." Berliners are responsible for the cleanliness of their city. Therefore, "it is only logical to ensure cleanliness in our city, in addition to prevention and waste avoidance, through repression in the form of the updated catalog of fines. With the catalog of fines, we are pursuing the goal of significantly reducing disposable packaging in the catering sector and putting a stop to illegal dumping of waste."