On a sunny afternoon, the McDonald’s at the edge of Tübingen buzzes with customers. Teenagers loiter over fries, a family shares burgers, cardboard cups and boxes pile up on plastic trays. Nothing here suggests rebellion. And yet, this fast-food outpost sits at the center of one of Germany’s most consequential environmental experiments. Since January 2022, the city of Tübingen has been charging 50 cents ($0.60) for nearly every piece of disposable “to-go” packaging — every coffee cup, every pizza box, every burger wrapper — and 20 cents ($0.25) for throwaway cutlery or straws. The historic university city in southwestern Germany pioneered the model to stem its waste tsunami. The goal was blunt: Make single-use packaging just inconvenient enough that people would start thinking twice. “The aim of the packaging tax is to avoid waste altogether,” says Mayor Boris Palmer, a prominent former member of the Green Party who has governed the city since 2007. “That’s why it applies to all disposable packaging, regardless of the material.” Compostable cups get no discount. From the city’s perspective, single-use is single-use. Known for its picturesque old town, cobblestone streets and the Eberhard Karls University, one of the country’s oldest universities, Tübingen attracts up to two million visitors every year. The medieval old town clings to the Neckar River, half-timbered houses lean into narrow streets, and punts glide lazily beneath arched bridges. Home to around 90,000 residents, Tübingen manages to be hip (it’s one of the youngest cities in Germany, with an average age of just under 40) while preserving its traditions. But it’s also known for its strong focus on sustainability and green policies.  Famed for its half-timbered houses lining cobblestone streets, Tübingen’s goal is to ditch single-use packaging. Credit: Ilona Bradacova / Shutterstock By the late 2010s, the postcard image was increasingly marred by an all-too-modern sight: Trash heaps. Disposable coffee cups stuffed into bins, pizza boxes wedged beside them, plastic lids and forks scattered on church steps after weekends. Tübingen’s problem is hardly unique. In Germany, single-use trash increased by more than 100 percent between 1994 and 2017, costing a mid-size city like Tübingen nearly a million Euros a year for waste management. According to the nonprofit Deutsche Umwelthilfe (Environmental Action Germany), Germans use 2.8 billion disposable cups and 1.3 billion plastic lids each year — about 320,000 cups every hour. Because most cups combine paper with a plastic lining, 99 percent are not recycled. Municipalities bear the cleanup costs. Voluntary programs and a municipal initiative to introduce reusable packaging achieved little. In 2021, Germany banned most single-use plastics and Styrofoam containers to combat the ever increasing waste heaps. Since January 2023, Germany requires any food vendor to offer a reusable packaging option and customers can request businesses to fill their portable containers. However, this well-intentioned law didn’t have much effect on the ground. By some estimates, the demand for reusable containers only increased by one percent. So after consulting with local businesses, Tübingen tried something different: A local packaging tax. Businesses selling food or drinks for immediate consumption pay it to the city. Whether they pass the cost on to customers is their choice.  Weighed down by negative news? Our smart, bright, weekly newsletter is the uplift you’ve been looking for. [contact-form-7] Four years after the rollout, Tübingen’s experience shows that a packaging tax works: The use of reusable containers in the city has quadrupled, according to Mayor Palmer. Three quarters of eateries have reduced their single-use packaging, reports the Initiative Verpackungswende (Initiative for Packaging Turnabout), a coalition of environmental organizations and packaging companies.  “The city has become cleaner,” Claudia Patzwahl, a city administrator who coordinated the rollout, says. “You can see it in the cityscape.” Municipal cleaning services confirm there is less discarded packaging in public spaces and that bins fill more slowly. Some locals even returned to the old-fashioned custom of carrying lunchboxes to transport their meals.  Meanwhile, the tax has raised substantial revenue: In 2022, over a million euros; for 2025, the budget projects about 800,000 Euros. Officials see the decline not as a failure but as proof that fewer disposable items are being used. The extra revenue funds street cleaning, waste management and environmental programs. It also helps subsidize alternatives. While many business owners were initially skeptical, at least half now support the tax, according to polls. Tübingen offers up to 500 Euros (almost $600) for businesses introducing reusable packaging systems and up to double that toward commercial dishwashers. The city has even introduced a reusable pizza box with a €5 ($5.90) deposit, developed with a private supplier. At chocolART, a chocolate festival which takes place in Tübingen every December, a vendor uses a tasty alternative to disposable packaging. Credit: Moritz Klingenstein / Shutterstock Yet the critics of the tax are just as vocal as the people celebrating it. Patzwahl became the nemesis of McDonald’s, whose local franchisee fought the tax all the way to Germany’s highest court. The fast-food giant criticized the tax as “additional financial burden for the already strained restaurant industry as well as for the people.” It argued that municipalities had no right to levy it and that it conflicted with national waste law — especially since food might be eaten outside city limits. But the higher courts disagreed. In May 2023, the Federal Administrative Court upheld Tübingen’s right to levy the tax, and in January 2025 the Federal Constitutional Court rejected the complaint, confirming the tax does not violate constitutional or federal law. Legal observers describe the decision as a turning point. Cities now know that such a tax could survive even against a global corporation.  Other mid-size cities moved quickly. Konstanz introduced a similar tax in January 2025 and Freiburg followed in January 2026. According to Deutsche Umwelthilfe, 155 other cities are interested in exploring the model.  Early figures from Konstanz suggest the city’s total waste volume fell by nearly five percent since the tax was introduced. Still, the results come with asterisks. A follow-up study by researchers at the University of Tübingen found that while disposable packaging declined, the overall weight of municipal waste did not drop dramatically, largely because heavier items like glass bottles are not covered by the tax. Businesses, too, point to complications. Bakeries selling bread in paper bags are exempt, while the paper wrapped around a hot sandwich is taxed. Tourists sometimes balk at the unexpected surcharges. And the tax requires monitoring, billing and enforcement. The neighboring state of Bavaria recently passed a law barring its municipalities from introducing a similar tax, arguing it would place an undue burden on the economy.  Wait, you're not a member yet? Join the Reasons to be Cheerful community by supporting our nonprofit publication and giving what you can. Join Cancel anytime But Patzwahl is unfazed. “I don’t have to think about whether it’s worth the effort for even a second,” she says. “The city spends far less administering the tax than it once did cleaning up the waste it targets.” For U.S. or other international cities drowning in takeaway trash, it’s a model worth watching. The combination of economic disincentive for single-use, on-the-ground cleanup revenue and encouragement of reusable systems could be a powerful complement — or alternative — to outright bans or deposit-return systems. Tübingen has not eliminated waste or solved plastic pollution. But it has turned a coffee cup into a conversation, and a modest fee into a behavioral nudge backed by law. Sometimes, cleaning up the streets starts not with a ban, but with a price tag small enough to notice — and annoying enough to change habits. 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