The Art of Trash

So this summer, I was in Germany for two hours.

I was in this Frankfurt airport for a layover, and in my brief cultural immersion, if you will, I noticed one stellar thing:
very precise trash cans.

The thing about trash cans was really a stark contrast between say, America and Germany. In America, trash is sort of a neglected thing; we often see weary, graffitied, misshapen bins leaning against the wall, with everything from candy wrappers to discarded coffee cups to fragments of a mushed sandwich, or even broken mirrors. In Germany, however, trash cans are a piece of delectable detail in the smooth, minimalist aestheticism of Germany.

Ha--I'm not your average tourist, am I?

There are two basic trash systems in US: Paper and cans and bottles and things you can imagine being ground up in a machine and magically reverted into its original state again go to recycle. All the other rubbish* goes in the aforementioned sad, neglected trash bin.

But here's Germany.

Dilemmas. So many dilemmas.

And the above?

The two on the left are pretty straightforward: paper and glass. The yellow one, or the Gelbetonne, is for packaging. The one on the right is Restmuüll, "the rest."

And that's only a simplified version of the trash system in Germany. Sometimes, there's another bin, called Biomüll--for the biowaste such as food scraps. There also can be a Sperrmüll, for special cases such as furniture and things like broken mirrors.

So sometimes, the trash system looks like this:

See? Even the kids take classes on it.

So what do you guys think about the trash system? Efficient and stylish? Or plain too nitpicky?

*I realize I just said rubbish, which is a very UK word. I would imagine this would be the basic system in England too.

Sources:
http://www.noordinaryhomestead.com/the-world-of-trash-in-germany/ 
http://www.aliadventures.com/2013/02/how-to-throw-out-your-garbage-in-germany/