Flickr: mprinke

Despite what you might think, the fact that the words “Germany” and “green” both begin with “g” is more than just an interesting linguistic coincidence based on English taking the Latin Germania for Germany and saving the native Deutsch for describing the Dutch. No: even shrouded in winter snow, Germany is a green, green country – and we’re not just talking pine forests and verdant hillsides, either, as numerous and pleasant as they may be.

Politcally, too, Germany is a deep shade of green. A little over thirty years ago, the world’s first ever ecological political party was formed in Germany, and they called themselves Die Grünen, or “the Greens”. So it was Germany that gave the world the name, which has entered into most European languages in translation; and Germany is a leader in “Greenness” today.

After all, the German greens have been in the Bundestag for more than twenty years and were in government from 1998 to 2005; in no other country has progressive ecological politics moved so swiftly onto the mainstream agenda. Other signs of this are visible every day in German cities – from the recycling collection points and endless multicoloured bins for sorting your rubbish through to a wide variety of shops sporting the word bio, or “organic” in English.

And just as the political greens moved from minority party to coalition partner over the last thirty years, Bioläden (organic shops) have in Germany developed from small, dingy affairs in slightly dubious areas of town into large, bright supermarkets that can be found in almost every district in every city.

Before, an organic shop was a centre for people with alternative lifestyles. The first of their kind in Germany were opened in cities with big left-wing movements like Hamburg and – as it was at the time – West Berlin. The rest of Germany remained suspicious of them, and completely unfamiliar with their often-bizarre product range. Furthermore, whilst during the nineties big German supermarket chains drove down the price of food to new historical lows, organic shops started to look more and more unaffordable even to people ideologically convinced by the idea.

This is roughly the situation in the UK and France today, with the only genuinely popular organic products having found their way into big supermarkets. German Greens, however, mistrusted big companies and their environmentally irresponsible supply chains and went another way: they started their own supermarkets. The idea was to make organic produce accessible to everyone – geographically, intellectually and financially.

The idea has taken off. After all, the concept of a supermarket has advantages: there is a store in every part of town, things are displayed simply and recognisably, and customers benefit from big economies of scale. This means that German cities will usually have at least one organic supermarket in every area (with two or three in the more upscale parts of town) with a full range of familiar everyday products in their organic versions; and the prices are, whilst clearly higher than at Lidl, Rewe or the other major chains, reasonable.

In contrast to organic stores in other countries, where you can by carob bars and almond tofu until you’re sick of them, but won’t find anything approaching recognisable vegetables for example, German organic supermarkets are easy-to-use one-stop shops offering you everything you would find elsewhere – and more –all in top ecological quality. Flour, potatoes, greens, pasta, cheese, tinned tomatoes – you name it, they’ve got it.

“Even meat?” I hear you ask, wary of the wild look in the eyes of many an eco-warrior when confronted with a meat-eater; “yes, even meat!” I reply. I said “you name it…”, and I meant it! This is, after all, Germany, and organic shops know that they won’t get most citizens of this carnivorous country through the door without a sensible selection of Wurst.

Another thing that we non-Germans might also consider incompatible with an organic lifestyle is beer. A visit to a German Biosupermarkt, however, will set you right there: you can be Green and drink beer, beer of every kind – pils, ale, special Oktoberfest brew, all of it guaranteed organic, free of pesticides and (who’d have thought it?) remarkably cheap.

That is, for me, the sign that Germany really is Europe’s greenest country: it costs me less to by local organic beer than it does to get a normal bottle of that teutonic hop-nectar. Yes, you read right: less. Find me another country where this is the case, and I might, perhaps, consider living there. Perhaps. It’d have to have great green countryside like Germany too, though, and a nice bunch of smiling green politicians in parliament, too.

All photos courtesy of acht&siebzig on Flickr unless otherwise stated.