Nobody knows when Freiburg, the city embraced by foothills of the Black Forest region, became eco-conscious. In 1984, it became the first city in all of Germany to introduce concessional environmental tickets to encourage the use of public transport.
Decades later, in 2019, the city boasts of an enviably large pedestrian zone and has a higher percentage of bicycle users.
Statistics show that 70% of Freiburg’s vehicles are electric, and there is a legit neo-hipster community in the city living off-grid in low-energy sustainable housing, generating their own electricity using solar power. Is Freiburg the green utopia nobody told me about?
Sustainable ambitions
With all these green credentials, one would think the city is smug about its achievements. But, “no policy decision is ever too much in terms of environmental protection,” seems to be the political ballgame here.
“Freiburg has ambitious climate targets,” said the city’s 34-year old mayor Martin Horn, addressing a conference on local governments for sustainability a few months ago, to which I was invited along with mayors from different cities around the world.
“We are now aiming to reduce our Co2 emissions by 50%,” he said in his speech inside the hallowed halls of at the Historical Merchants’ Hall, a gothic brick-red building in Minster Square. Outside, at the market square, tourists and locals were browsing stalls selling everything from fresh cheese to wild foraged mushrooms to sausages.
In modern times when most European cities look like clones, with their pretty town squares in a blend of architectural styles and streets carpeted with cobblestones, Freiburg seems to have set itself apart by living sustainably long before the trend became a corporate buzzword.
Energy mountain
I tag along with a team on a visit to the city’s erstwhile landfill called Eichelbuck, now decommissioned yet producing landfill gas, which is used for energy needs. Located in the thickly wooded area on the fringes of the Black Forest in the suburbs of the city, Eichelbuck landfill received thousands of tonnes of urban detritus from the city when it was operational. Foul smell travelled downwind and created a constant source of grief for the nearby village of Vörstetten until it was finally decommissioned in the mid 1990s. Things are different now.
In its current form, Eichelbuck hosts Freiburg’s largest solar installation, stitched across its belly, erected in 2011 with a total capacity of 2.5 megawatts. It meets the annual electricity needs of around 1,000 households in the city.
Additionally, since 2014, the landfill gas from the 50-metre-high high former waste mountain, mixed with bio-gas generated on the site, supplies electricity and heat to the neighbouring Landwasser district, meeting 15% of the district’s energy needs including 3600 households with green electricity and 780 with additional heating.
Freiburg has successfully capitalised on its unused landfill by turning it into an ‘energy mountain’. Now, Eichelbuck is a Freiburg success story and receives visitors, who are keen to understand how a decommissioned landfill like this can be put to better use.
Not quite perfect
Frankly, after all this, it seemed inevitable that I’d fall in love with Freiburg. Mulling over all the information that I received, over a banana one evening, I asked my host, a college-goer who’s subletting his apartment, where the organic waste is deposited. “Oh, I don’t separate organic waste. Just put everything in the trash can in your room,” he said.
His response felt insensitive, even as I was overjoyed to shatter the near-perfect image that Freiburg had built for itself in my few days in the city. As it turns out, even in this environmentally conscious utopia, flaws exist and not everybody recycles their banana peels.
This Stuttgart-based writer is as happy on the road as he is tending to his houseplants.
