The Ten-Centimetre Fork

In Potsdam the length of a disposable fork is now a tax question. Since Thursday the city has charged 20 cents on every piece or set of disposable cutlery handed out with food. Section 2 of its official guide says the charge applies to cutlery “ab einer Länge von 10 cm” (from a length of ten centimetres). Section 18 of the same guide exempts small pieces “soweit sie höchstens 10 cm groß sind” (provided they measure ten centimetres at most)¹. A fork of exactly ten centimetres is taxed in one section and exempt in the other. The guide has an answer of sorts: it makes no claim to be complete, and “Änderungen in der Handhabung bleiben daher vorbehalten” (changes in how the rules are applied are therefore reserved).

The tax came into force on 1 October 2026. It is 50 cents on each disposable cup, can, bottle or other drinks container, 50 cents on each disposable plate, box or other food packaging, and 20 cents on each piece or set of disposable cutlery. Whoever sells the food or drink owes it, whether the customer eats on the spot or takes the meal away. Cans and bottles that carry the statutory deposit are exempt². Tübingen has had the same tax since 2022, Konstanz since 2025 and Freiburg since January. By the count of Deutsche Umwelthilfe, a campaign group that supports the tax, Potsdam is the fourth city in Germany to levy it³. It is the only one in Brandenburg⁴.

The timing is awkward. The federal government, the state of Brandenburg and Potsdam’s own mayor have all promised less bureaucracy, and the federal coalition agreement names restaurants among the trades to be relieved of it⁵. Potsdam’s new tax has the air of a man who hands his beer to a friend before trying something on a dare. (In a disposable cup, that beer would be taxed as well¹.)

The tax has a serious case behind it all the same.

The case for the tax

Installing, maintaining and emptying Potsdam’s public litter bins costs about €950,000 a year, and every taxpayer shares that bill whether or not they ever buy a coffee to go⁶. The tax moves part of it to the people who cause it. It also leaves sellers a way out. A business that serves in reusable cups and boxes, or fills the customer’s own, pays nothing, and the city subsidises the switch with up to €500 per outlet for reusable crockery and up to €2,000 for a dishwasher⁷.

The courts have approved it. In 1998 the Constitutional Court struck down a similar tax in Kassel because it cut across the federal waste law of the day⁸. In May 2023 the Federal Administrative Court upheld Tübingen’s version apart from two clauses. It held that a city may add a measure of its own where it pursues the same aim as federal law, at least under the waste law as it then stood⁹. (That law was replaced in August¹⁰.) In November 2024 the Constitutional Court dismissed the complaint of a fast-food franchisee in Tübingen. Nobody, it noted, had shown that businesses were closing in greater numbers after the tax came in¹¹.

And the burden, its defenders say, is small. Tübingen’s mayor, Boris Palmer, calls the effort manageable: a two-page return once a year¹². According to the city, most businesses dealt with it by adding one extra key to the till, and the tax assessed for 2022 came to about €1.01 million¹³. Potsdam’s administration puts Tübingen’s staff cost for the tax at about €100,000 a year¹⁴.

So the claim is a simple tax that shifts a cost onto those who cause it, cuts rubbish and pays for itself. Three parts of that can be checked: whether it is simple, whether the rubbish goes, and how the money compares with the cost.

Hold my beer

The coalition agreement of 2025 commits the federal government to cut the bureaucracy costs of business by 25 per cent, about €16 billion, and to dismantle documentation duties for crafts, retail, farming, restaurants and hotels in particular⁵. In January the same government cut VAT on restaurant meals to 7 per cent, expressly to support the trade, at a cost of about €3.6 billion a year¹⁵.

The promises answer a complaint with numbers behind it. The Normenkontrollrat, the federal government’s own regulation watchdog, puts the bureaucracy costs of business at €64 billion a year¹⁶. KfW, the state development bank, found that small and medium-sized firms spend about 7 per cent of their staff’s working time on bureaucratic processes, 32 hours a month for the average firm¹⁷. The government’s expert commission on research and innovation reports that 44 per cent of founders surveyed in 2023 had less time for research and innovation because of bureaucracy¹⁸.

Brandenburg’s government calls less bureaucracy a central concern¹⁹. A week before the tax began, the general secretary of the state’s Social Democrats, Kurt Fischer, said that at a time when politics must concentrate on the cost of living, recovery and “einem entschlossenen Bürokratieabbau” (a determined reduction of bureaucracy) he considered introducing the tax very difficult²⁰. Potsdam’s treasurer, Burkhard Exner, whose department drafted it, belongs to the same party²¹. A motion by the Christian Democrats to withdraw the tax was adjourned in September and is on the council’s agenda for 4 November²². In June the mayor, Noosha Aubel, promised to improve processes and “Bürokratie abbauen” (cut bureaucracy); she was speaking of the administration’s own²³.

Business associations call the tax a “bürokratisches Monster”²⁴. On its face that is too much. The statute runs to three pages and nine paragraphs. The difficulty starts where the statute stops.

Cake with a fork

The statute taxes packaging in which food and drink are sold “für den unmittelbaren Verzehr an Ort und Stelle oder als mitnehmbares take-away-Gericht oder -Getränk” (for immediate consumption on the spot or as a take-away dish or drink)². A sealed yoghurt from a supermarket shelf is neither. A hot coffee in a paper cup is the textbook case. Between the two lies most of what a bakery, a kiosk or a petrol station sells, and the statute does not say on which side it falls. The city’s guide does. It asks sellers to judge what such food is typically bought for, whatever the customer in front of them intends, and it gives the tests: temperature, consistency, how firmly the pack is closed, and whether cutlery or a sauce comes with it¹.

Taxed on the left, not on the right

How Potsdam's guide to the packaging tax sorts eight pairs of ordinary sales. A taxed container costs 50 cents and a taxed piece of cutlery 20 cents, before VAT.

Show the list

Taxed	Not taxed	Section of the guide
Cake with a fork	The same cake without one	13
Warm quiche	Cold filled roll	13
Ice cream in a paper cup	Ice cream in a cone	11
Pizza collected in its box	The same pizza, delivered	2, 15
Salad bowl with dressing and fork	Sealed ready-made salad	12, 14
Hot soup from a vending machine	Instant soup to make at home	14, 17
Burger at the drive-through	Leftovers boxed up in a restaurant	10, 16
Straw longer than 10 cm	Straw shorter than 10 cm	2, 18

Each line has a reason. A fork suggests that the cake will be eaten at once. A cone is “keine Verpackung, sondern Lebensmittel” (not packaging but food). A delivered pizza is eaten at home, so it is neither consumed on the spot nor carried away by the customer. The reasons do not make the list easier to apply at seven in the morning with a queue at the counter. Sachets of ketchup, sugar or coffee cream are exempt up to 25 grams or 25 millilitres. The wooden stick of a toffee apple is exempt as a carrier. Napkins are exempt as hygiene articles. Straws and chopsticks count as cutlery. The paper bag and the foil around a döner count as one packaging; every box, bag and cup of a burger menu counts separately¹. The material makes no difference, whether paper, bamboo, plastic or aluminium⁷. A recyclable box is taxed like any other, because the test is reuse.

Then there is the tax on the tax. The packaging tax counts as an excise, and an excise is part of the price on which VAT is charged, as the city’s own page points out⁷. Passed on in full, 50 cents therefore costs the customer 54 cents on food, which carries 7 per cent VAT, and 60 cents on a drink, which carries 19 (own calculation). At a McDonald’s in Tübingen the ordering screen shows these amounts: 54 cents each for the burger, the fries and the nuggets and 60 cents for the cup, €2.22 of packaging tax, VAT included, on a meal priced at €11.99²⁵. That is a surcharge of 18.5 per cent (own calculation). Potsdam’s administration reckons that a typical coffee to go at €3.50 becomes about 14 per cent dearer. With the VAT on the tax it is 17 per cent (own calculation). The administration decided against a cap per meal, which the Federal Administrative Court had struck out of Tübingen’s statute as too vague to apply, and against a minimum threshold below which small sellers would go free²⁶.

The seller owes the city more than money. Every taxable item has to be counted by type. A return is due on an official form within fifteen days of the end of each quarter; the form on the city’s website is a PDF with a print button and a line for a signature, with room for ten outlets and an annex for more²⁷. Records of goods bought and sold must be kept for inspection and, where they do not show the kind and number of taxed items, supplemented with notes. City staff may enter the premises during business hours to check. A carelessly false return can cost up to €10,000².

One tax, four rulebooks

Tübingen says all this is little work. Potsdam’s chamber of commerce says staff must be trained and tills reprogrammed, which is harder for a firm with outlets in several towns, since the tax applies in only one of them. A bakery with ten branches in Potsdam has trained its staff and expects arguments about prices at the counter²⁸.

The one set of instructions from a till dealer that we found, written for Konstanz, uses more than one key. It sets up six: drinks packaging, food packaging to take away, food packaging eaten in, and the same three again for cutlery, because the tax takes the VAT rate of whatever is inside²⁹. (The page predates this year’s VAT cut on restaurant meals, which removes one of the distinctions.) Coffee adds a refinement. Konstanz reminds its businesses that a coffee which is mostly milk carries 7 per cent VAT and any other coffee 19³⁰. The tax on the same paper cup is thus 54 cents with a latte macchiato in it and 60 cents with black coffee (own calculation).

We found no measurement of what this costs the businesses. The only figures on it come from a survey by the chamber of commerce in Freiburg, which opposed the tax there. Of 107 member firms that answered in April, 83 per cent reported extra work, and 30 per cent reported one to three hours of it a day³¹. Those are the answers of firms that chose to reply. A study commissioned by eight business associations and published in August had every reason to print a large number. It puts a question mark where the businesses’ compliance cost should be. For the cities’ own collection cost it estimates 10 to 15 per cent of revenue, against less than 1 per cent for wage tax³². An article in the Zeitschrift für Kommunalfinanzen in February calls the tax’s bureaucracy costs rather high, to judge by its abstract; we could not obtain the full text³³.

The rulebook can be checked, though, and here the four cities part company. The rates are identical. Much of the rest is not, as the four statutes and the cities’ own guidance show^{34353630373839}.

	Tübingen	Konstanz	Freiburg	Potsdam
In force since	January 2022	January 2025	January 2026	October 2026
Tax return	once a year	once a year	once a year	every quarter
Drive-through sales	exempt	taxed	taxed	taxed
Coffee stirrers	threshold of 14 cm	not mentioned	exempt	taxed
Stalls at markets and fairs	exempt up to ten days a year	taxed	exempt up to ten days a year	exempt up to ten days a year
Packaging the seller takes back and recycles	exempt	exempt	taxed	taxed

Take the drive-through. Tübingen’s notes exempt it, on the ground that a customer in a car may be out of town before the fries are finished. The exemption extends to anyone who buys from the saddle of a motorcycle or of an e-bike that needs a number plate³⁵. So the McDonald’s in Tübingen charges €14.21 for the meal at the screen inside and €11.99 at the window²⁵. Potsdam, Konstanz and Freiburg tax the window too. Konstanz lets a döner go untaxed if it is handed over on a paper napkin and charges 50 cents if it comes in a paper bag or in foil³⁰. Tübingen’s interpretation notes run to 22 pages³⁵ and Freiburg’s to 17⁴⁰. Potsdam’s guide, at 12, is the short one.

For a kiosk with one till this is a rulebook to learn once. For a chain it is a different rulebook in each city, on top of rules that apply everywhere. Federal law already obliges sellers who fill plastic food containers or disposable cups to offer a reusable alternative; the smallest firms may fill customers’ own containers instead¹⁰. An EU regulation adds duties for restaurants, cafés and caterers: from February 2027 to fill containers that customers bring, and from February 2028 to offer reusable packaging, the second with an exemption for micro-enterprises⁴¹. Producers of plastic cups pay a federal levy of €1.236 per kilogram into a fund that reimburses cities for clearing them up⁴².

Freiburg has had nine months of this. On 2 October, the day after Potsdam’s tax began, council groups holding a majority there announced a joint motion to restrict Freiburg’s tax to disposable cups for the time being. Their reasons, as reported: the present rules are too complicated, incomprehensible to many citizens and a disproportionate bureaucratic burden for businesses, and reusable alternatives are established for cups but often lacking for everything else⁴³. Bavaria has gone further and has forbidden its municipalities to levy a packaging tax at all since January⁴⁴. Kleinmachnow, a town of about 20,000 between Potsdam and Berlin, voted for one in 2023 and withdrew it in 2024, on the ground that the revenue might not cover the cost of collecting it²⁶.

Does the rubbish go?

Tübingen announced success after one month. “Bis zu 15 Prozent weniger Müll” (up to 15 per cent less rubbish) was the headline of its press release of 1 February 2022⁴⁵. The 15 per cent comes from setting January 2022, when 30.74 tonnes were collected from public bins, against January 2018, with 36.24 tonnes. Against January 2020 the fall was 10 per cent, and against January 2019 it was 5 per cent. Against January 2021, when the country was in lockdown, the bins were 26 per cent fuller (own calculation). The release itself noted that there had been practically no New Year’s Eve rubbish in 2021 or 2022. At both turns of the year the sale of fireworks was banned nationwide, to spare the hospitals during the pandemic⁴⁶. The January figures for 2018 to 2020 include that rubbish, so part of the difference from those three years has nothing to do with the tax.

Up to 15 per cent less, or 26 per cent more

Rubbish collected from Tübingen's public bins in January, in tonnes. The packaging tax began on 1 January 2022; the city's press release compared that month with January 2018.

Show the numbers

January	Tonnes	January 2022 compared
2018	36.24	15% lower
2019	32.28	5% lower
2020	34.34	10% lower
2021	24.31	26% higher
2022	30.74	–

A doctoral researcher at the University of Tübingen, Stefan Moderau, looked for a fairer comparison. For a working paper published in 2023 he asked 52 cities for the monthly weight of the rubbish from their public bins, got 19 usable data sets, and built from the other 18 a statistical twin of Tübingen to show what its bins would have held without the tax. His finding for 2022: “There is no significant reduction in the weight of the waste in public litter bins in Tübingen”⁴⁷. He is careful about what that means. Cups and boxes are light, and he weighed the rubbish without sorting it. A fall in packaging could be hidden under the glass bottles and dumped household rubbish that he saw in the bins.

The city agrees that weighing cannot settle it. Nicole Romey of the city administration told the Stuttgarter Zeitung in 2024 that packaging is too light for success to be measured that way, and that sorting the rubbish by hand was out of the question: “Das ist nicht machbar” (that cannot be done). Tübingen calls the tax a success anyway, because its bins are visibly less clogged⁴⁸. Nearly five years on, we know of no measurement from the first city that shows less rubbish.

Moderau did find that the supply of reusable containers jumped. In January 2023 Tübingen ranked first among German cities for restaurants offering reusable cups and boxes per head. Two qualifications are his own: Marburg achieved a similar rise with a subsidy and no tax, and offering a reusable cup is not the same as anybody using it⁴⁷.

Konstanz has the best evidence for an effect. The city’s statisticians, with a researcher at the University of Konstanz, weighed the loads of the street-cleaning lorries day by day. They report that 2025, the first year of the tax, brought 4.5 per cent less street rubbish than the average of 2021 to 2024, or 21.9 tonnes, and that the downward trend remains when weather and events are taken into account⁴⁹. That is a measurement, and it points the right way. It has no comparison city, so whatever else changed in Konstanz in 2025 is in the number too, and it weighs all street rubbish, of which packaging is a part.

The sorting study behind the federal plastics levy gives an idea of how large a part. The study, carried out in twenty cities, found that in street litter bins disposable cups made up 3.5 per cent of the weight and 11.5 per cent of the volume, and food containers 1.6 and 7.6 per cent⁵⁰. Together that is about 5 per cent by weight and 19 per cent by volume (own calculation). The study counted only items that contain plastic, so plain pizza boxes and paper bags come on top. Even so, a fall of 4.5 per cent in the total weight would mean that a large part of the packaging had gone, if packaging is what fell. Konstanz did not sort its rubbish, so it cannot say.

Potsdam did not sort its bins before deciding. The administration’s proposal offers a calculated share of about 10 per cent for drinks packaging and 5 per cent for other disposable packaging, derived from an assumed 2.1 million taxable items a year, and calls these figures for orientation only. It says the rubbish from public bins has “stetig gestiegen” (risen steadily). Its own table shows 217 tonnes in 2018, 155 in 2019, 171 in 2020, 332 in 2021 and 369 in 2022. That is a fall of 29 per cent, a small rise, and then a near-doubling in 2021, a year in which the number of bin emptyings also nearly doubled²⁶. Between 2018 and 2022 the weight rose by 70 per cent (own calculation), though not steadily. Neither the proposal nor the city’s statistical yearbooks explain the jump. The yearbooks do show that the higher level has lasted: 380 tonnes in 2023 and 402 in 2024, while the recorded emptyings fell to 51,880 a year, fewer than in 2020⁵¹. In the same table the number of 70-litre bins rises from 138 to 366 within three years and falls back to 156, which suggests that the record-keeping changed along with the rubbish (own reading).

It will be hard for the city to say later whether the tax worked. Potsdam knows what its bins weigh in total, the kind of number that showed nothing in Tübingen. Because it has not sorted them, it does not know how much of that weight is packaging. The planned evaluation is to gain an overview “ob im öffentlichen Raum ein Rückgang von Einwegverpackungen festzustellen ist” (of whether a decline in disposable packaging can be observed in public space)⁵². We found no sorting of the bins, done or planned, in the council papers; the proposal argues that even a sorted measurement would be of limited use in showing the effect of the tax²⁶. What the city will measure is reusable packaging: it plans to ask about 650 businesses whether they offer it and what share of their customers use it⁵³. Freiburg, by contrast, measured its bins by weight, volume and photograph before its tax began⁵⁴.

The tax’s opponents concede some effect. The study commissioned by the business associations, which argues against the tax, assumes that a nationwide version would cut taxed packaging by 6.4 per cent by weight once substitutes are counted (own calculation from its figures)³².

The nearest experience abroad is Dutch. From July 2023 sellers in the Netherlands had to charge extra for plastic cups and food containers taken away. They set the amount themselves and kept the money, and the surcharge also applied where the customer had no real choice, as with a pre-packed salad or a delivered meal. Parliament voted for its abolition after three and a half months, and from December 2023 the inspectorate was instructed not to enforce it⁵⁵. A second motion, adopted in 2025, objected that consumers were bearing extra costs while the plastic in the litter was not getting less⁵⁶. In December 2025 the government told parliament that the surcharge does not work well and will be struck from the rules⁵⁷. The seller kept the Dutch surcharge and the city collects Potsdam’s tax, so the comparison is loose. The Dutch rules as a whole did have an effect. The number of plastic disposable cups put on the market roughly halved between 2021 and 2024, with the largest fall in offices⁵⁸.

Side effects

A tax that changes what people buy has effects beyond the bin, and some of them run against it. The model built for the business associations spells out the first. Of the 20,513 tonnes of taxed packaging that it expects a nationwide tax to remove, 12,696 tonnes come back in another form, which is 62 per cent (own calculation from its figures). Customers switch to packaged food from the supermarket (2,228 tonnes), to take-away packaging that is not taxed, such as cold food in place of warm or delivery in place of collection (7,111 tonnes), and to reusable containers, which also have to be made (3,357 tonnes)³². These are the assumptions, and there are no studies of them. But obvious ways of avoiding the tax are written into the rules.

The most obvious way of avoiding the tax is delivery, and its exemption has no environmental reason. Tübingen’s notes, which Potsdam’s guide says it follows, derive it from the wording of the statute: a delivered meal is not taken away by the customer, and because an order can be placed a day ahead, it is not bought for immediate consumption on the spot either³⁵. The box is the same box. In Freiburg, according to press reports in February, one pizzeria gives its guests an empty box as a present on arrival, and customers of an American fast-food chain have their orders delivered to the car park opposite⁵⁹.

Nor is the reusable cup the better cup by definition. A life-cycle study for the Federal Environment Agency in 2019 found that replacing disposable cups is as a rule good for the environment only if each reusable cup is used more than ten times, and better more than 25, has no disposable lid and is washed with green electricity. Under average conditions a reusable system shows a climate benefit only from about 50 uses per cup⁶⁰. In the Potsdam associations’ own survey, 37 per cent of the 110 firms that answered said they already offer reusable containers, and more than half estimated that fewer than 5 per cent of customers use them⁶¹.

Does the tax also cost sales? Sellers say so. In the Freiburg chamber’s survey 66 per cent of firms reported falling sales of coffee to go and 63 per cent of warm food to take away. The chamber adds that customers not infrequently leave their goods at the till when they see the tax, so that the food and its packaging are thrown away³¹. Potsdam’s administration writes of Tübingen that no loss of turnover attributable to the tax has shown there so far²⁶. Neither statement comes with data. Tübingen’s yield has fallen from €1.01 million assessed for 2022 to an estimated €800,000 a year¹³¹⁴. That shows fewer taxed items, but it cannot tell a reusable cup from a coffee not bought.

The question could be settled. Firms report their turnover to the tax office, and the statistical offices publish it every year by sector for each district⁶². A comparison of turnover in the hospitality trade, a city against its statistical twin as in the Tübingen paper, would be a start. We found no study that has tried.

One side effect needs no study, because it follows from tax law. The packaging tax is a business expense⁶³. A seller who absorbs it and leaves prices alone earns that much less profit and pays less tax on it. For a company in Potsdam the saving is about 32 cents for every euro of packaging tax absorbed, and about 16 of those cents are trade tax, the tax the city itself levies on business profits (own calculation: 15 per cent corporation tax plus the solidarity surcharge of 5.5 per cent on it, and 3.5 per cent times Potsdam’s multiplier of 470 per cent)^64656667. A sole trader whose profit stays under the allowance of €24,500 pays no trade tax to begin with. Where the seller passes the tax on in full, the state collects VAT on it: between €83,000 and €226,000 a year on the planned €1.19 million, depending on the mix of food and drink (own calculation). The financial annex of the administration’s proposal mentions neither effect.

What the money is for

The order of events is in the council’s own files. On 15 November 2024 the council group of the Greens, Volt and Die PARTEI moved that the city administration examine whether a tax on disposable crockery, as in Tübingen, “zur Vermeidung von Müll und zur Entlastung des Haushalts beitragen kann” (can help to avoid rubbish and to relieve the budget)⁶⁸. The council passed an amended version on 22 January 2025. Six days earlier, on 16 January, the administration had already listed the tax among its measures to consolidate the 2025 budget, with an estimated net yield of about €1 million a year⁶⁹. In May 2025 it told the council that the result of the examination was expected by the end of the year⁷⁰. The money was in the plan before the answer was.

Potsdam's own arithmetic

What the city plans to collect, what collecting it will cost, and what all of its public litter bins cost.

€1.19 m

planned revenue a year from 2027

the proposal assumes 2.1 million taxed items a year

€189,000

planned cost of collecting it, a year

two clerks, postage and paper; 16% of the revenue

€950,000

cost of all public litter bins, a year

taxable packaging is about 15% of their contents by weight, on the city's estimate

The plan expects €1.19 million a year from 2027 and costs of €189,000 a year for two clerks, postage and paper²⁶. Collection would take 16 per cent of the revenue (own calculation). The proposal says the revenue estimate assumes 2.1 million taxed items a year. At the top rate of 50 cents these yield €1.05 million (own calculation). The planned €1,189,000 is also, to the euro, the €1 million net yield of the consolidation list plus the €189,000 of costs. The proposal adds that the yield may decline over the years as businesses switch to reusable packaging, which is what the tax is for.

The tax is meant to bring in more than the city spends on all of its public litter bins. By the administration’s own estimate, taxable packaging is about 15 per cent of what is in them by weight. By volume, which is what fills a bin, the national sorting study suggests about a fifth, and more once plain paper and cardboard are counted. At a fifth, the taxed packaging costs the city about €190,000 a year in bins, about what it will spend on collecting the tax (own calculation). At twice that share it would be €380,000, about a third of the planned revenue. Litter swept up from the ground is not in these sums, and the council papers do not itemise it.

The administration does not hide the fiscal aim. Its proposal says the packaging tax is “auch unter dem Aspekt betrachtet, die Belastungen des städtischen Haushalts zu verringern” (also considered with a view to reducing the burdens on the city budget). When the consumer advice centre asked for the revenue to be spent on cleanliness, the answer was that taxes flow into the general budget and are “nicht zweckgebunden” (not earmarked)²⁶.

The city’s finances are tight. Potsdam plans a deficit of about €33.4 million for 2026⁷¹, and on 1 October, the day the tax began, the treasurer imposed a spending freeze for the rest of the year⁷². German municipalities as a whole ran a record deficit of €31.9 billion in 2025⁷³. The deputy head of the Association of German Cities, Christine Wilcken, who calls a packaging tax a good instrument against litter, said in January that against deficits of this size its revenue is “nur ein Tropfen auf den heißen Stein” (only a drop on a hot stone)⁷⁴. Potsdam’s planned €1.19 million is 3.6 per cent of its planned deficit (own calculation).

For now it is less than that. The council postponed the start from July to October on 1 July, the day the tax was due to begin, at the request of the business associations. Because the first quarterly return is due only in mid-January, nothing will be assessed in 2026: the revised plan shows no revenue for the year and costs of €134,500⁷⁵. The city says nobody will go round the shops to check how the start is going⁴. A post for a packaging-tax clerk was still being advertised after the tax had begun, with applications open until 8 October⁷⁶.

The money was in the plan before the answer was.

The verdict

Much of the case stands. The tax is lawful. It will raise several times what it costs the city to collect. A year after its tax began, Tübingen had more restaurants per head offering reusable cups and boxes than any other German city, and in the first year of theirs the street-cleaning lorries of Konstanz came back a little lighter.

Three parts do not stand. The statute is simple, but applying it turns on the temperature of a quiche, the presence of a fork and, in one city of the four, the customer’s vehicle. The effect on rubbish is unproven where it was studied and will be hard to establish in Potsdam, which did not sort its bins first. And the tax shifts more than the cost. On the city’s cost figure and the sorting study’s shares, it is to raise between three and six times what the taxed packaging costs in bins (own calculation), into a budget where it is not earmarked, and it was entered in the consolidation list before the examination the council asked for had produced an answer. The side effects, from substitute packaging to lost sales, have been modelled by opponents and asserted by both sides, and measured by nobody.

Monster is too big a word for what this does to a single café. Manageable, the word of Tübingen’s mayor, is too small for a baker with ten shops or a chain with branches in two of the four cities. Each of these rules can be defended on its own, which is how the average small or medium-sized firm arrives at 32 hours of paperwork a month¹⁷. A government that means to cut that burden by a quarter needs somebody, somewhere, to decline to add to it.

There were simpler designs. Freiburg’s council majority now proposes one: for now, tax only the cup and leave the quiche alone. The federal plastics fund already works by another route. It charges producers by the kilogram, needs no fork measured at any counter, and is meant to pay cities for the clearing up, though only of items that contain plastic. Wilcken calls the fund too complicated and says it is not yet working⁷⁴. Potsdam has registered with it and filed its claims, and in July it could not yet say what it would receive⁷⁷.

Potsdam has reserved the right to change how it applies its rules. With the ten-centimetre fork it will have to begin by deciding which of the two is the rule.