Good morning,

My wife and I quite often go to Bruno Röllin AG on Riedthofstrasse 192 to recycle our PET, Glass bottles, cardboard and paper, essentially all the stuff that is free to recycle but forces us either to go around town to find a place to dispose of them, or wait for the monthly or bi-weekly collection of cardboard/paper collection. Using this massive recycling facility allows us to recycle everything in one place.

Although we had never paid before to recycle these normal items (nothing bulky), last saturday a guy asked us to weight our car before and after disposal and charged us c. CHF8 to dispose of probably 10Kg of cardboard, maybe 10 bottles of wine, 1Kg of paper and an IKEA bag full of PET bottles.

What was weird is that the employee who was dealing with us was trying to put everything in the general compactor without wondering whether it was recyclable material (despite all of it being recyclable)

I was wondering whether this is normal or whether they charged us for no reason (we don't speak German and they don't speak English so trying to get an explanation was simply not an option).

Thanks for your help.

Guillaume.

Sounds like outsourcing at it's best (read: worst). We certainly don't get charged for "normal" recycling in Adliswil ZH at the Gemeinde recycling centre, we did get charged 1 CHF or something for some Polystyrin.

In any case, is 8 CHF enough to worry about? Thats 1 slice of pizza...

Hi Bozza,

Nothing worth worrying about but if recycling at these centres costs as much as putting everything into Zuri-sacks and requires driving there as opposed to walking to the closest bin 5 meters away, then if defies the purpose of recycling does not it?

PET bottles you dispose either where you bought them (if they have a box) or in any shopping centre, wine bottles in the Sammelstellen (those blue steel boxes you find everywhere in Zurich), paper isn't a problem anyway (it's either collected or there is an inhouse solution) and If you are a resident here you get coupons which allow you to dispose 400 kilos for free annually, even bigger stuff like furniture, TVs and whatsoever.

There is a recycling centre near me (in Klingnau) which charges chf 5 per visit even if you drop off items which are usually not subject to a fee, such as paper, cardboard, metal.

So for 2015 I bought an annual sticker for chf 60 rather than pay a fee each time.

Go here. You can get rid of everything for free, regardless of amount. Drive in, unload, drive out.

http://www.recycling-paradies.ch/index.php?sammelstelle

Thanks Karl,

Driving 1h to recycle defies the purpose of recycling to me but thanks for the suggestion.
I ended up buying 5 large plastic bins for each of the items to recycle and will drive around the local containers and wait for the Cardboard and Paper collection, will save time, money and, more importantly, pollution in the end.