This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The forest was unnaturally still when Soňa Chovanová Supeková first picked up the bear’s scent. It was roe deer rutting season in southern Slovakia, and the hills below the Carpathian mountains were busy with tourists biking and foraging for mushrooms. Fellow hunters who had come face to face with bears had told Supeková the fear had been so great they could not lift their rifles. Sitting with her father, a hunter in his 80s who had killed a few bears, she found herself in a similar state of dread—she was out on that trip expecting to kill deer, and did not want to come on a bear unexpectedly.

“Fear permeated me…the smell penetrated to the tip of my bones,” says Supeková, the founder of the Club of Slovak Lady Hunters. But the bear never appeared. The next morning, the daughter and father hunting duo saw its droppings. “We breathed a sigh of relief only in the car.”

Europe’s brown bears are a protected species. But they—alongside wolves and lynxes—are increasingly crossing paths with farmers, forestry officials, and hunters such as Supeková. The appetite for killing big carnivores has shot up as wolf and bear populations have grown, several bear attacks have made headlines, and politicians have taken aim at laws that brought back them back from the brink of extinction.

Sweden has issued permits to kill 486 of its brown bears, about 20 percent, this hunting season, which runs until mid-October. In 2023, the country conducted record-breaking culls of lynxes and wolves. Romania’s MPs voted in July to double its hunting quota from 220 brown bears to 481. In Slovakia, where a bear was recently filmed rampaging through a village, lawmakers voted in June to allow hunting near villages under certain conditions. In July, the European court of justice ruled that recent wolf culls in Austria and Spain were unlawful. Earlier in the year, Switzerland also faced legal challenges for its proposal to kill 70 percent of its wolf population.

The debate around shooting protected species has provoked such fury among farmers, hunters, and conservationists that it has bubbled up to the highest levels of bureaucrats in Brussels. The European Commission, whose president, Ursula von der Leyen, had a pony killed by a wolf two years ago, is seeking to downgrade the animal’s protection status.

“The wolf is no longer an animal with two ears, four legs and one tail; it is a political subject,” says Luigi Boitani, a zoologist at the Sapienza University of Rome and chairman of the Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe, a conservation group. “There’s a lot of polarization. When you speak about wolves and bears, the world is not a variety of greys, it’s black or white.”

Wolves were killed off across much of Europe in the 19th and 20th century, but began to bounce back in the 1970s as people moved from villages to cities, and governments later protected the animals and their habitats. A similar shift happened with brown bears and lynxes, with conservationists resettling them in regions from which they had been wiped out.

“This issue is an incendiary force in the hands of populists.”

The continent is now home to six species of large carnivore, and the EU bans killing them, with some exceptions—for example if they pose a danger to the public. Perched at the top of their food chain, the animals help ecosystems thrive by regulating prey populations. There is also some evidence they can limit the spread of disease.

But the scale and speed of their return—there are thought to be more than 20,000 wolves and 17,000 bears in Europe—has increasingly led to conflicts with humans. Farmer and hunting lobbies have pushed to reduce the number of hurdles needed to kill them as the animals have expanded their territory and attacked people and livestock.

A week after Supeková found the bear’s tracks in the forest, she says: “A farmer’s son met a bear on a forest road when he was mushroom picking in a place only about 2 kilometers away. Luckily, the bear ran away.”

Footage of a bear barreling down the streets of a small Slovakian town captured international attention in March, with five injured in the attack. So too did the death of a Belarusian hiker who died when fleeing from a bear the day before. The attacks prompted a change in law to let Slovak security services shoot brown bears that come within half a kilometer of a human settlement. A few months later in Romania, the death of a 19-year-old hiker at the hands of a bear led to the prime minister calling lawmakers back from their summer break for an emergency session in which they voted to cull more bears.

People from villages and the countryside want to reduce the numbers of bears because attacks are increasing, says Supeková. “What’s very tragic is that one bear in the town of Liptovský Mikuláš injured five people, running across the town where children were outside playing games.”

The issue has become fodder for populist parties courting rural votes, with politicians blasting Brussels for putting their children at risk and abandoning villages out of elitist environmental concerns.

Critics say the deaths are tragic but have been blown out of proportion. In Romania, which is home to the most brown bears in Europe, the animals killed 26 people and injured 276 over 20 years, according to the environment ministry. Data from Eurostat shows that motorized vehicles killed 45,000 people in the country in that time.

Cultural associations are a problem for the wolf, which has long been portrayed as the villain of fairytales. Helmut Dammann-Tamke, president of the German hunting association and politician with the center-right Christian Democrats, says the threat of wolf attacks on sheep is “like something on a serving platter” for the far right because it reaches people on an emotional level. “This issue is an incendiary force in the hands of populists.”

A 2022 study of German municipalities found that wolf attacks on livestock predict far-right support. After controlling for factors such as immigration and jobs, the researchers found wolf attacks were associated with far-right gains in municipal elections of between 1 and 2 percentage points. “The evidence points to wolf attacks as one potential driver of electoral radicalisation,” the authors wrote.

Environmental activists question whether blanket policies to cull animals will do much to avoid conflicts with humans and have called for measures to promote peaceful coexistence that range from fences and guard dogs to awareness campaigns for visitors.

Scientists are not yet troubled by the wolf’s population across the continent, but have warned that killing wolves in countries with small populations could prove catastrophic. Large-scale culls could put populations of these predators below local survival levels, they warn. Culls can even increase predation of livestock, as packs are disrupted, sending lone, vulnerable wolves venturing on to farms to hunt. The same “backfire” effect has also been documented with cougars and coyotes.

Ciprian Gal from the Romanian branch of Greenpeace said the Europe-wide trend of weakening protection for big carnivores was “a step backwards” that echoed times when humans felt a strong sense of competition with wildlife.

“European governments, influenced by dominant populist rhetoric and powerful hunting and agricultural lobbies, seem to be choosing solutions based on fear and rapid economic return,” he says. “In a way, this is a backlash against the ambitious green policies of recent years and a valve for those still struggling to cope with the climate reality we’re facing.”

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The forest was unnaturally still when Soňa Chovanová Supeková first picked up the bear’s scent. It was roe deer rutting season in southern Slovakia, and the hills below the Carpathian mountains were busy with tourists biking and foraging for mushrooms. Fellow hunters who had come face to face with bears had told Supeková the fear had been so great they could not lift their rifles. Sitting with her father, a hunter in his 80s who had killed a few bears, she found herself in a similar state of dread—she was out on that trip expecting to kill deer, and did not want to come on a bear unexpectedly.

“Fear permeated me…the smell penetrated to the tip of my bones,” says Supeková, the founder of the Club of Slovak Lady Hunters. But the bear never appeared. The next morning, the daughter and father hunting duo saw its droppings. “We breathed a sigh of relief only in the car.”

Europe’s brown bears are a protected species. But they—alongside wolves and lynxes—are increasingly crossing paths with farmers, forestry officials, and hunters such as Supeková. The appetite for killing big carnivores has shot up as wolf and bear populations have grown, several bear attacks have made headlines, and politicians have taken aim at laws that brought back them back from the brink of extinction.

Sweden has issued permits to kill 486 of its brown bears, about 20 percent, this hunting season, which runs until mid-October. In 2023, the country conducted record-breaking culls of lynxes and wolves. Romania’s MPs voted in July to double its hunting quota from 220 brown bears to 481. In Slovakia, where a bear was recently filmed rampaging through a village, lawmakers voted in June to allow hunting near villages under certain conditions. In July, the European court of justice ruled that recent wolf culls in Austria and Spain were unlawful. Earlier in the year, Switzerland also faced legal challenges for its proposal to kill 70 percent of its wolf population.

The debate around shooting protected species has provoked such fury among farmers, hunters, and conservationists that it has bubbled up to the highest levels of bureaucrats in Brussels. The European Commission, whose president, Ursula von der Leyen, had a pony killed by a wolf two years ago, is seeking to downgrade the animal’s protection status.

“The wolf is no longer an animal with two ears, four legs and one tail; it is a political subject,” says Luigi Boitani, a zoologist at the Sapienza University of Rome and chairman of the Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe, a conservation group. “There’s a lot of polarization. When you speak about wolves and bears, the world is not a variety of greys, it’s black or white.”

Wolves were killed off across much of Europe in the 19th and 20th century, but began to bounce back in the 1970s as people moved from villages to cities, and governments later protected the animals and their habitats. A similar shift happened with brown bears and lynxes, with conservationists resettling them in regions from which they had been wiped out.

“This issue is an incendiary force in the hands of populists.”

The continent is now home to six species of large carnivore, and the EU bans killing them, with some exceptions—for example if they pose a danger to the public. Perched at the top of their food chain, the animals help ecosystems thrive by regulating prey populations. There is also some evidence they can limit the spread of disease.

But the scale and speed of their return—there are thought to be more than 20,000 wolves and 17,000 bears in Europe—has increasingly led to conflicts with humans. Farmer and hunting lobbies have pushed to reduce the number of hurdles needed to kill them as the animals have expanded their territory and attacked people and livestock.

A week after Supeková found the bear’s tracks in the forest, she says: “A farmer’s son met a bear on a forest road when he was mushroom picking in a place only about 2 kilometers away. Luckily, the bear ran away.”

Footage of a bear barreling down the streets of a small Slovakian town captured international attention in March, with five injured in the attack. So too did the death of a Belarusian hiker who died when fleeing from a bear the day before. The attacks prompted a change in law to let Slovak security services shoot brown bears that come within half a kilometer of a human settlement. A few months later in Romania, the death of a 19-year-old hiker at the hands of a bear led to the prime minister calling lawmakers back from their summer break for an emergency session in which they voted to cull more bears.

People from villages and the countryside want to reduce the numbers of bears because attacks are increasing, says Supeková. “What’s very tragic is that one bear in the town of Liptovský Mikuláš injured five people, running across the town where children were outside playing games.”

The issue has become fodder for populist parties courting rural votes, with politicians blasting Brussels for putting their children at risk and abandoning villages out of elitist environmental concerns.

Critics say the deaths are tragic but have been blown out of proportion. In Romania, which is home to the most brown bears in Europe, the animals killed 26 people and injured 276 over 20 years, according to the environment ministry. Data from Eurostat shows that motorized vehicles killed 45,000 people in the country in that time.

Cultural associations are a problem for the wolf, which has long been portrayed as the villain of fairytales. Helmut Dammann-Tamke, president of the German hunting association and politician with the center-right Christian Democrats, says the threat of wolf attacks on sheep is “like something on a serving platter” for the far right because it reaches people on an emotional level. “This issue is an incendiary force in the hands of populists.”

A 2022 study of German municipalities found that wolf attacks on livestock predict far-right support. After controlling for factors such as immigration and jobs, the researchers found wolf attacks were associated with far-right gains in municipal elections of between 1 and 2 percentage points. “The evidence points to wolf attacks as one potential driver of electoral radicalisation,” the authors wrote.

Environmental activists question whether blanket policies to cull animals will do much to avoid conflicts with humans and have called for measures to promote peaceful coexistence that range from fences and guard dogs to awareness campaigns for visitors.

Scientists are not yet troubled by the wolf’s population across the continent, but have warned that killing wolves in countries with small populations could prove catastrophic. Large-scale culls could put populations of these predators below local survival levels, they warn. Culls can even increase predation of livestock, as packs are disrupted, sending lone, vulnerable wolves venturing on to farms to hunt. The same “backfire” effect has also been documented with cougars and coyotes.

Ciprian Gal from the Romanian branch of Greenpeace said the Europe-wide trend of weakening protection for big carnivores was “a step backwards” that echoed times when humans felt a strong sense of competition with wildlife.

“European governments, influenced by dominant populist rhetoric and powerful hunting and agricultural lobbies, seem to be choosing solutions based on fear and rapid economic return,” he says. “In a way, this is a backlash against the ambitious green policies of recent years and a valve for those still struggling to cope with the climate reality we’re facing.”

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

René Heiden pulls two glass yogurt jars off the shop shelf, and lists the nearby supermarkets in which they can be returned once empty.

His Berlin grocery shop avoids single-use packaging in favor of reusable containers, a waste reduction model that is having something of a revival in Germany. But it’s surprisingly hard to get right.

“You need a range of packaging to make it as convenient as possible for the consumer,” says Heiden. An oil bottle, for example, needs a thin neck and a small spout to help it drip—“you would never put yogurt in one of those.” Marmalade and spreads, on the other hand, work best in cylindrical jars that a knife can fully scrape.

Germany has long been praised for its recycling prowess, but its efforts to reuse packaging are perhaps more impressive. Three of its favorite drinks—beer, water and milk (arguably in that order)—are covered by nationwide deposit schemes. Food companies are starting to embrace the refill movement for other foods as well.

Europe’s packaging problems have piled up as consumerism spreads and countries across Asia have closed their ports to ships full of western trash.

“I’m seeing more and more products that use reusable packaging,” says Heiden, who has devoted a wall of his shop Samariter Unverpackt to dispensers of grains and cereals from which customers can fill home-brought containers. “But I also see some producers who are trying to expand, but have to go back because the handling costs are too high.”

The problem that Heiden and others are trying to tackle is a glut of garbage that is fouling waterways, killing wildlife and—after plastics break down into tiny particles—infiltrating our organs. In 2021, the average German generated about eight times their bodyweight in waste: a whopping 651 kilograms, more than the average residents of all but four countries in Europe. Germany created 64 percent more plastic waste that year than it did two decades earlier, and it burned most of it.

But it’s not just a problem here. Europe’s packaging problems have piled up as consumerism has spread and countries across Asia have closed their ports to ships full of western trash. As part of efforts to stop harmful garbage clogging landfills or being burned in incinerators, the EU has set targets to reduce packaging 5 percent by 2030, 10 percent by 2035 and 15 percent by 2040.

Recycling is one option, but plastic recycling is a knotty and unresolved issue. Besides, the European hierarchy of waste has put prevention and reuse above recycling since 2008. But campaigners say rules to reduce packaging are riddled with loopholes—and are calling not just for tighter regulations, but also a culture shift.

“The best packaging is the one you don’t produce,” says Nathan Dufour, who leads efforts to promote reuse systems at the campaign group Zero Waste Europe. If you need to use it—for hygiene reasons, say—“then that packaging needs to stay in the loop for as long as possible.”

Germany has a head start on many of its neighbors with its bottle deposit schemes, in which customers are charged a bit more upfront for their purchase—whether fancy juice from an organic store or cheap beer from an off-license—and given the money back when they return the empty glass. The bottles, which get dropped off in “reverse vending machines” in supermarkets, are then transported, cleaned and refilled.

Hidden behind this process is a delicate alliance of companies that have agreed to standardise and share their packaging, some of which go back a long way. The Milch Mehrweg Pool—Milk Reuse Pool (MMP)—for example, was started by the German dairy industry in the 80s and formalised in the 90s.

Countries that lack Germany’s infrastructure to process bottles—and the culture around returning them—may also find it tricky to build up such a system from scratch.

The process has not been smooth sailing, and after 2008, the organisation was disbanded. The system continued, ungoverned, until 2022 when it was reactivated as the Mach Mehrweg Pool (“Make Reuse Pool”). Now it is working on strengthening cooperation between members and increase efficiency. It has also expanded to include other foods and drinks.

“Reusable systems are most efficient if they are scaled, if they are used a lot, if they are used in every region,” says Julia Klein, a former engineer from Siemens who runs the MMP. “Only keeping this to the dairy sector limits the potential.”

One customer is the coffee retailer Truesday; its brown bottles are on the shelves of Heiden’s store. The aim is to sell the beans for their “true price”—accounting for hidden costs and compensating for damages that can’t be avoided. To cut down on plastic waste, its founder, Henning Reiche, decided to sell the beans in MMP bottles, which he thinks also helps with the marketing. The brown glass keeps the beans safe from sunlight but customers can still see through it. “It’s a nice symbol of the transparency that we want to express with the pricing.”

The MMP has little raw data on its environmental footprint—an issue Klein chalks up to years of inactivity—but based on numbers from the mineral water industry, it estimates the average milk bottle in its pool lasts about 50 cycles in the system.

The benefits of a reuse pool include economies of scale and lower barriers to entry for newcomers. The standardisation process means bottles can be used by all companies in the pool, so “empties” need only to be taken to the nearest buyer. This cuts transport costs—and emissions.

But there are also costs. Glass bottles are heavier than single-use packaging, which increases emissions from transport, and they may need expensive cleaning equipment that small firms lack. Heide, who runs Samariter Unverpackt, says they also take more time to process within the store—and the extra seconds add up.

Countries that lack Germany’s infrastructure to process bottles—and the culture around returning them—may also find it tricky to build up such a system from scratch.

“I realized it’s a totally different story for other European countries that are starting from zero,” says Klein. Brands don’t know which labels and machinery to use, supermarkets don’t have space to stack crates and consumers aren’t used to returning empty containers.

But starting a new system offers the chance to make it more efficient than Germany’s, she adds.

“If you look from an outside perspective, it doesn’t make so much sense to carry dirty empty jars and bottles back to the supermarket,” says Klein. “In the long run, what makes much more sense is if reusable packaging is being picked up at home.”

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

René Heiden pulls two glass yogurt jars off the shop shelf, and lists the nearby supermarkets in which they can be returned once empty.

His Berlin grocery shop avoids single-use packaging in favor of reusable containers, a waste reduction model that is having something of a revival in Germany. But it’s surprisingly hard to get right.

“You need a range of packaging to make it as convenient as possible for the consumer,” says Heiden. An oil bottle, for example, needs a thin neck and a small spout to help it drip—“you would never put yogurt in one of those.” Marmalade and spreads, on the other hand, work best in cylindrical jars that a knife can fully scrape.

Germany has long been praised for its recycling prowess, but its efforts to reuse packaging are perhaps more impressive. Three of its favorite drinks—beer, water and milk (arguably in that order)—are covered by nationwide deposit schemes. Food companies are starting to embrace the refill movement for other foods as well.

Europe’s packaging problems have piled up as consumerism spreads and countries across Asia have closed their ports to ships full of western trash.

“I’m seeing more and more products that use reusable packaging,” says Heiden, who has devoted a wall of his shop Samariter Unverpackt to dispensers of grains and cereals from which customers can fill home-brought containers. “But I also see some producers who are trying to expand, but have to go back because the handling costs are too high.”

The problem that Heiden and others are trying to tackle is a glut of garbage that is fouling waterways, killing wildlife and—after plastics break down into tiny particles—infiltrating our organs. In 2021, the average German generated about eight times their bodyweight in waste: a whopping 651 kilograms, more than the average residents of all but four countries in Europe. Germany created 64 percent more plastic waste that year than it did two decades earlier, and it burned most of it.

But it’s not just a problem here. Europe’s packaging problems have piled up as consumerism has spread and countries across Asia have closed their ports to ships full of western trash. As part of efforts to stop harmful garbage clogging landfills or being burned in incinerators, the EU has set targets to reduce packaging 5 percent by 2030, 10 percent by 2035 and 15 percent by 2040.

Recycling is one option, but plastic recycling is a knotty and unresolved issue. Besides, the European hierarchy of waste has put prevention and reuse above recycling since 2008. But campaigners say rules to reduce packaging are riddled with loopholes—and are calling not just for tighter regulations, but also a culture shift.

“The best packaging is the one you don’t produce,” says Nathan Dufour, who leads efforts to promote reuse systems at the campaign group Zero Waste Europe. If you need to use it—for hygiene reasons, say—“then that packaging needs to stay in the loop for as long as possible.”

Germany has a head start on many of its neighbors with its bottle deposit schemes, in which customers are charged a bit more upfront for their purchase—whether fancy juice from an organic store or cheap beer from an off-license—and given the money back when they return the empty glass. The bottles, which get dropped off in “reverse vending machines” in supermarkets, are then transported, cleaned and refilled.

Hidden behind this process is a delicate alliance of companies that have agreed to standardise and share their packaging, some of which go back a long way. The Milch Mehrweg Pool—Milk Reuse Pool (MMP)—for example, was started by the German dairy industry in the 80s and formalised in the 90s.

Countries that lack Germany’s infrastructure to process bottles—and the culture around returning them—may also find it tricky to build up such a system from scratch.

The process has not been smooth sailing, and after 2008, the organisation was disbanded. The system continued, ungoverned, until 2022 when it was reactivated as the Mach Mehrweg Pool (“Make Reuse Pool”). Now it is working on strengthening cooperation between members and increase efficiency. It has also expanded to include other foods and drinks.

“Reusable systems are most efficient if they are scaled, if they are used a lot, if they are used in every region,” says Julia Klein, a former engineer from Siemens who runs the MMP. “Only keeping this to the dairy sector limits the potential.”

One customer is the coffee retailer Truesday; its brown bottles are on the shelves of Heiden’s store. The aim is to sell the beans for their “true price”—accounting for hidden costs and compensating for damages that can’t be avoided. To cut down on plastic waste, its founder, Henning Reiche, decided to sell the beans in MMP bottles, which he thinks also helps with the marketing. The brown glass keeps the beans safe from sunlight but customers can still see through it. “It’s a nice symbol of the transparency that we want to express with the pricing.”

The MMP has little raw data on its environmental footprint—an issue Klein chalks up to years of inactivity—but based on numbers from the mineral water industry, it estimates the average milk bottle in its pool lasts about 50 cycles in the system.

The benefits of a reuse pool include economies of scale and lower barriers to entry for newcomers. The standardisation process means bottles can be used by all companies in the pool, so “empties” need only to be taken to the nearest buyer. This cuts transport costs—and emissions.

But there are also costs. Glass bottles are heavier than single-use packaging, which increases emissions from transport, and they may need expensive cleaning equipment that small firms lack. Heide, who runs Samariter Unverpackt, says they also take more time to process within the store—and the extra seconds add up.

Countries that lack Germany’s infrastructure to process bottles—and the culture around returning them—may also find it tricky to build up such a system from scratch.

“I realized it’s a totally different story for other European countries that are starting from zero,” says Klein. Brands don’t know which labels and machinery to use, supermarkets don’t have space to stack crates and consumers aren’t used to returning empty containers.

But starting a new system offers the chance to make it more efficient than Germany’s, she adds.

“If you look from an outside perspective, it doesn’t make so much sense to carry dirty empty jars and bottles back to the supermarket,” says Klein. “In the long run, what makes much more sense is if reusable packaging is being picked up at home.”