German guidelines for bakery bag recycling and kids' upcycling workshop

Consumer advice organisations in Germany recommend that bakery bags with a transparent plastic window be split for disposal. The plastic window, which can make up more than 40 % of the bag, should be placed in the yellow bin or collection bag, while the remaining paper part goes into the blue bin. If the window cannot be removed, the bag can still be placed in the blue bin, where the plastic will be filtered out during processing. Contaminated bags, such as those with butter or meat, must be thrown into residual waste.

At the Zitadelle museum in Germany, a workshop led by Cornelia Broeckerhoff invited five girls to create a fox sculpture from discarded bottle caps, bottle tops and other plastic waste. Using tools like drills and heated needles, the participants transformed the material into a colorful up‑cycled object, demonstrating a creative reuse of items that would otherwise end up in the trash.