Alternatives "Germany"

The Blauer Engel (Blue Angel) is the German government’s eco-label, introduced in February 1978. It marks products and services that do less harm to the environment than others of the same kind…

EWS Schönau is a German energy cooperative from a small town in the Black Forest that supplies green electricity, and gas with a share of biogas, across Germany. It grew out of a parents’ group…

GLS Bank is a German cooperative bank, based in Bochum, that lends only to projects with a social or ecological purpose: renewable energy, organic farming and food, housing projects, schools and…

OxfamUnverpackt is the online gift shop of Oxfam Deutschland where each “gift” is a donation: a goat for €28, school books for €12 or clean water for 50 people for €44. The person receiving it gets a…

Posteo is an independent email provider in Berlin: for €1 a month, it offers an ad-free mailbox with calendar and address book, financed only by its users. It is an alternative to Gmail, Outlook or…

Refill Deutschland is a non-profit initiative that shows where anyone can refill a water bottle with tap water for free: shops, cafés, offices and public buildings put a blue Refill sticker on the…

The Netzwerk Solidarische Landwirtschaft is the German association of community supported agriculture (Solawi): farms whose members pay a monthly share of the farm’s costs and get a share of the…

The BZfE Saisonkalender is the seasonal calendar for fruit and vegetables of Germany’s Federal Centre for Nutrition, free as an app and as a poster, showing when each kind is harvested in Germany and…

foodsharing.de is a free, ad-free platform run by volunteers in Germany who collect surplus food from shops, bakeries and restaurants and share it, without money, with anyone who wants it, after…

Goldeimer is a Hamburg social enterprise that sells recycled toilet paper with the Blauer Engel label and compost toilets for gardens, allotments and camper vans, and puts its profits into sanitation…

NaturFreunde Deutschlands is a non-profit association for outdoor leisure with more than 65,000 members in over 500 local groups, which runs more than 350 Naturfreundehäuser (simple guesthouses in…

The Deutscher Tierschutzbund is the umbrella organisation of animal welfare associations and animal shelters in Germany. At the end of 2023 it had 785 local member associations in 16 regional…

Gesundheitsinformation.de is the health information site of IQWiG, the German institute that assesses the benefits and harms of medical treatments. It explains illnesses, examinations and treatments…

Oxfam Shops are second-hand shops in Germany, run by Oxfam with about 4,000 volunteers, that sell donated clothes, books, music, films and household goods. Their surplus funds Oxfam Deutschland’s…

The taz is a national daily newspaper from Berlin, founded in 1978, that belongs to a cooperative of more than 26,000 readers, so no publisher or investor can buy it. Its website has no paywall…

The Unverpackt Verband (Unverpackt e.V.) is the association of German zero-packaging shops, where customers fill their own jars, bags and bottles with dry goods, oils, cleaning products and cosmetics…

The Verbraucherzentralen are the consumer advice centres of the 16 German federal states: non-profit associations, mostly publicly funded, that advise on contracts, energy, insurance, banking, food…

The Volkshochschulen (vhs) are the public adult education centres in Germany: 815 centres with about 2,630 branches, most run by towns and districts. They offer affordable courses in languages…

The DGE recommendations, “Gut essen und trinken”, are Germany’s food-based dietary guidelines from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ernährung, which since 2024 take the environment into account as well…

Dr. Hauschka is a range of certified natural cosmetics made by WALA, a foundation-owned company in Bad Boll-Eckwälden in Swabia that grows many of its medicinal plants in its own biodynamic garden.

Ecosia is a Berlin search engine that spends all its profits on climate action, mainly tree planting and renewable energy, and has been legally barred from being sold since it became steward-owned in…

Grünspecht is a family company in Bavaria that has made natural baby and family products since 1994, such as cherry-stone pillows, natural rubber teething rings, organic cotton and wool care, mostly…

Kaffee-Kooperative is a Berlin company that sells Fairtrade coffee from Rwanda roasted and packed in Kigali, by a roastery owned by Rwandan coffee cooperatives, so that more of the price stays in the…

memo is a German mail-order company that sells more than 20,000 products for the office, home and everyday life chosen for their sustainability, and ships them in a reusable box at no extra charge…

Ostheimer makes wooden toy figures and animals by hand in Zell unter Aichelberg near Stuttgart, from wood from Central European forests, painted and dipped in oil, and is owned by a non-profit…

Quartiermeister is a Berlin beer brand owned by a non-profit foundation: its profits go to neighbourhood projects, chosen by public vote in the cities where the beer is drunk.

The Slow Food Genussführer is a German restaurant guide of about 450 places chosen by Slow Food volunteers for regional, seasonal cooking without convenience products, published as a book and an app…

Weltläden are Germany’s fair trade shops, about 900 local shops mostly run by volunteers, which sell coffee, chocolate, crafts, clothing and gifts from suppliers checked against fair trade criteria.

The Wohnprojekte-Portal is a free German directory of about 890 co-housing projects and groups, run by the non-profit Stiftung trias, where people can find a shared housing project with room for them…

Zu gut für die Tonne! (“Too good for the bin”) is the German federal government’s campaign against food waste, with a free app of about 800 leftover recipes, storage tips for each food and a…

The Krankenkassenliste is the official list of Germany’s statutory health insurance funds (gesetzliche Krankenkassen) with their additional contribution rates, published by their umbrella body, the…

The Krankenkassenvergleich of Stiftung Warentest is a database of the contribution rates and extra benefits of 67 German statutory health insurance funds, which together insure about 97 % of…

abgeordnetenwatch.de is a German website where anyone can put a question to a member of parliament in public and read the answer. It also shows how each member voted in important roll-call votes and…

Aeternitas is a German consumer association for funerals and cemeteries, the “Verbraucherinitiative Bestattungskultur”. Its website explains how burial works in Germany, what each part of a funeral…

The Deutscher Mieterbund (DMB) is the umbrella organisation of more than 300 local tenants’ associations (Mietervereine) in Germany. Members of a local association get personal legal advice on rent…

The DZI Spendensiegel is a German seal for charities that collect donations. The DZI (Deutsches Zentralinstitut für soziale Fragen), a foundation in Berlin, awards it each year after checking the…

RECUP is a deposit system for reusable cups, bowls and pizza boxes in Germany: customers pay €1 for a cup, €5 for a bowl or €7 for a pizza box at a café or restaurant, and get the deposit back when…

The ANE Elternbriefe are 46 parent letters from the Berlin association Arbeitskreis Neue Erziehung, sent by post from a child’s birth until its eighth birthday, each explaining what parents can…

The Deutscher Alpenverein (DAV) is the German mountaineering association, with more than 1.6 million members in over 350 sections, which runs 325 mountain huts and 220 climbing facilities, maintains…

dieUmweltDruckerei is a German online print shop that prints flyers, business cards, brochures, posters, calendars and labels on 100 % recycled paper, much of it with the Blauer Engel label, using…

einhorn is a Berlin company that sells vegan condoms made from traceable natural rubber, and period products such as tampons and a menstrual cup, with no outside investors and in steward ownership.

The Initiative Pro Recyclingpapier is a German alliance of companies that promotes office and printing paper with the Blauer Engel, made from 100 % waste paper, and runs the Papieratlas, a yearly…

Lemonaid is a Hamburg brand of organic, Fairtrade-certified lemonades that gives 5 cents from every bottle sold to its own charity, Lemonaid & ChariTea e.V., which funds projects in the countries…

smarticular is a German website and publisher with free recipes for making cleaning and laundry products from a few basic ingredients, such as baking soda, washing soda, vinegar, citric acid and curd…

Speick is a family-owned natural cosmetics maker near Stuttgart, best known for its soaps and shaving products, whose whole range contains an extract of the Speick plant hand-picked in the Austrian…

TASSO is a German non-profit pet registry where owners record their dog’s or cat’s microchip number for free, so that a vet, shelter or finder can trace the owner when the animal is found.

The ZQP advice database is a free, ad-free search for care advice services across Germany, including the Pflegestützpunkte, run by the Zentrum für Qualität in der Pflege, a non-profit foundation in…

nebenan.de is a German neighbourhood network where only verified residents of the same area see each other’s posts: they lend tools, give things away, ask for help, recommend tradespeople and…

Tierheimhelden is a German website that brings together animals from shelters looking for a home, so that people who want a dog, cat or small animal can search many shelters at once instead of…

Viva con Agua is a Hamburg charity for drinking water and sanitation that also has its own mineral water brand, sold in German supermarkets, whose licence fees and profits fund its projects.

Pickawood is a German online shop for made-to-measure furniture: tables, shelves, sideboards, wardrobes and beds configured on the website to the centimetre, in solid wood or in panels, and built by…

CodeCheck is a German-language app and website that scans the barcode of a cosmetic, food or household product and rates its ingredients, with special ratings from BUND for microplastics and parabens…

Conny is a Berlin legal-tech company that checks for free whether a rent is above the German rent cap (Mietpreisbremse) and, if so, claims the reduction and the overpaid rent from the landlord as a…