Success for Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH): The Berlin and Frankfurt am Main regional courts have ordered franchisees of the fast food chains Nordsee, Burgermeister, Subway and Burger King to introduce a reusable range in the branches tested or to make improvements.
The shops must provide reusable packaging for all their drinks and food that are affected by the reusable packaging obligation. Test visits by DUH had previously shown that this was not the case. To bring reusable packaging into widespread use, DUH is calling on Environment Minister Schneider to introduce a national single-use tax on takeaway packaging of at least 50 cents.
„At franchise branches of Nordsee, Burgermeister, Subway and Burger King, we still found a complete lack of reusable cups or an inadequate supply. For the largest companies in the catering industry in particular, it should be a matter of course that customers are reliably provided with reusable cups everywhere, as this is where most packaging waste is generated. Instead, they are apparently still relying on the fact that the obligation to provide reusable cups is hardly or not at all monitored by the responsible state authorities. Bavaria's Interior Minister Herrmann now even wants to prevent Bavarian cities from making catering businesses responsible for their single-use waste by banning municipal packaging taxes. Tübingen and Constance have shown that this is the right way to reduce single-use waste.“
Barbara Metz, Federal Managing Director of DUH
The DUH testers carried out tests in franchise branches of Nordsee, Burgermeister and Subway. no reusable offer found at all. Although a cross-company reusable cup system was advertised at another Nordsee and a Burger King branch, test persons did not receive a reusable cup for all products ordered during the November 2024 test period.
SourceDUH
