In Warstein, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, rows of yellow and blue bags of old clothes and shoes have once again piled up in front of old clothes recycling bins this week: more than a dozen bags around Suttrop, and in Belecke someone even left a stroller beside the bin. Michael Triphaus, head of consulting and service at the Soest waste management company ESG, said the problem is not always that the bins are overflowing, but that the overall "disposal morality" has clearly declined in recent years.

He explained that fast fashion produces large quantities of low-priced, rapidly changing clothing, making the volume collected by recycling bins "enormously large," but the quality is so poor that sometimes it is barely fit even for rags. This is a problem throughout the district and even more serious in large cities. However, the situation in Warstein's urban area is relatively better, and Triphaus noted that previously there had only been cases where bins could not be emptied. On Thursday this week, when the bins near Suttrop cemetery and at the Belecke shooting club and Roswitha Street were emptied, the clothes piled in front of them were indeed collected as well; but if people leave items such as strollers, those are handled by the municipal works team.

The emptying schedule at these three locations is "relatively short." Kolping – Die Brücke, the company responsible for emptying old clothes recycling bins in Soest district, uses software to determine collection times: employees report the fill level of each bin during every collection, and the system uses that to estimate when it should next be emptied. Triphaus said this mechanism only works when no one unloads 20 bags of old clothes at once, for example after clearing out a house during a move. ESG appeals to residents to distribute clothing among multiple bins in such cases, but this does not always work. Moreover, Kolping only took over the district's bin operations on July 1, so there is not yet enough empirical data; as data accumulates, the collection schedule will become more accurate. Triphaus described this as "AI doing the calculating," which first requires collecting figures.

Because the problem keeps recurring, ESG is considering offering some kind of door-to-door collection service: people with especially large amounts of old clothes could make contact and wait for pickup. But Triphaus said this is difficult, "everything is a cost issue," and the service must be worthwhile. If more staff and vehicles are needed, that would eat into the publicly funded budget, and "we have to do our utmost not to make citizens bear more costs." He remains optimistic about Warstein, believing that overall it should be able to get running properly again; although it looks bad, it should not become the norm.

How to respond? Triphaus said it is "very difficult." There have been several previous attempts to install video surveillance, but "it still cannot be implemented under data protection law"; public information campaigns can reach many people, but often not the people actually causing the problem; and one must also ask, "we spent everyone's money, did it help?" ESG has therefore started with environmental education for children, hoping for an effect, but "that will only be visible much later." Ingo Schaup, head of Warstein's municipal works team, said this is a fundamental problem: "Overall, we have a waste problem." On Monday a small pile of trash appears, on Tuesday it grows, and by Thursday it is very large; the same is true in front of glass recycling bins and beside public trash cans at cemeteries and bus stops, and it has intensified over the years. For this reason, the works team has increased collection frequency: trash cans at Warstein market square, Belecke Wilke square, and along the B55 highway are now emptied three times a week. Schaup admitted that more staff could make collections more frequent, but "it is likewise a cost issue."

Source: Altkleidercontainer in der Stadt: Warum immer wieder Säcke davor liegen · Originally published on 2026-09-12