MAKING MONEY: Recycling – Turning waste into valuable raw materials | WELT Documentary

This is by far the best recycling documentary I have ever watched. It really shows the potential of recycling once infrastructure is in place.

I'm proud of the effort Germany has spent in addressing the recycling & garbage needs. They've set a good example many other countries can follow!

I'm SO glad I found this channel, I haven't stopped watching in two whole days. I'm stuck in bed sick, to be clear, not unemployed. These documentaries are like discovery channel used to be decades ago : flat facts and process description without all the fake drama and reality TV nonsense you see now. I also deeply appreciate seeing the iconic German adherence to regulations; it makes my OCD purr like a kitten. Recycling is normally a lazily and sloppily executed redirection to dumping in asia, but Germany does recycling correctly. 70% reclamation is incredibly impressive! Thank you for posting this.

I was stationed in Germany for 2 years, their recycling is incredible. Those gelbesacks I remember sorting. Great country, nice people and history. I miss it.

I am a Pakistani and am always impressed with german people and their technology. German people are very intelligent, hard workers and take a lot of pride in whatever they manufacture ( Mercedez Benz and heavy-duty machinery) also very careful of the environment. The rest of the countries should learn from them who should be recycling their trash and making money out of trash. My two cents

I am german, and I know very well our system: gelber Sack, Restmüll, Biotonne, ...Recyclinghof... but I never saw a documentation of the recycling process like this one! Great inside view! thanks!

Incredibly well done documentary !! The explanations, the narrations, the entire process is shown to us and explained in a clear, concise manner. The technology is incredible !!! The best documentary I've seen regarding garbage and recycling.

I love to see solutions and ideas instead of ongoing coverage of problems!

I remember German politicians promising this back in the 1980's. Awesome too see their words in action 40 years on.

Amazing. I am simply blown away. It makes me happy to see that all this waste is being Recycled. I wished we had something like this in America.

Excellent video. As a Materials Scientist I worked in the aluminium recycling industry. All scrap aluminium can be recycled. Adding silicon and copper gives diecastable alloys We made about 50 tons a day of recycled aluminium, increasing the value of the metal 3 fold. All materials can be either recycled or converted to heat/electricity. Even human excrement is used as fertiliser in China. Only affluent countries have huge tips wasting all these valuable materials. We need people with business acumen and a desire to do the right thing.Australia here, has some correct people doing the work correctly.

Personally, I found this documentary absolutely fascinating. I am sure other countries do similar but this seems about the best I have seen on the internet, what a great job these people do and what a great job the machinery does too, I found the work looks really interesting and the processes fascinating. Thanks so very much for this, really brilliant.

Every country should have these garbage plant machines!!! MANDATORY!!!

One of the most comprehensive and varied recycling documentaries I've seen! Great work. Very fascinating

Now I know why the most of my recycling is going from Denmark to Germany. I have often seen the Remondis trucks on the Danish roads. Fascinating.

Wow! this is an in depth look into Germany's recycling ! phenomenal! made me feel hopeful for the future of the planet!

Some huge ingenuity here. I worked in recycling for 30 years and always knew we were very innovative, for those who claim EV batteries will not be recovered, watch this space. Some electronic waste has a higher yield of valuable metals, than mined material, it is literally gold dust.

Remember: Repair and reuse is better for the environment than producing and shipping new devices! When it comes to basic devices like toasters, blenders, portable vacuum cleaners and other low tech things that never really go obsolete, repair is often easy. A toaster still works exactly like it did 50 years ago. So does a vacuum cleaner, and so does a microwave oven. They all still use the same kind of technology, and they all have reached their maximum level of efficiency decades ago. The first step should always be repair. That's why it is so important that we make sure that manufacturers don't make it impossible to repair things. A screwed together kitchen blender is trivial to repair, while a clipped or glued together model can barely be opened without damaging the plastic. Only when repair isn't realistically possible anymore (for instance, a cheap device with burnt out motor windings), the device should be scrapped and recycled. I wish the government would focus more on preventing devices from being scrapped and new ones from being produced. Even starting from recyled materials, producing a new device produces a lot of emissions.

It's a shame that the United States can not recycle the same way as in this video.

This. We need much more of complete solutions like this!