With our green and yellow service, we stand for a sustainable circular economy. In NRW we ensure that waste and recyclable materials are safely disposed of or recycled - from private household waste to industrial and commercial residues. We advise our customers on all aspects of safe recycling and disposal solutions.

In 1956 the economy boomed and Germany developed into a throwaway society. Between 1950 and 1961 the volume of household rubbish doubled, and wild rubbish spots shot up like mushrooms. There were no uniform waste laws, and environmental protection was far from an issue. Josefine and Theo Schönmackers, on the other hand, campaigned for clean conditions at an early stage and founded their joint waste disposal company in Kempen.

In the meantime, the company has developed into an experienced technology and system leader in recycling management in North Rhine-Westphalia. To this day, Schönmackers, with over 1,600 employees at over 20 locations, continues to focus on economic and ecological action as a central component of the corporate philosophy. After all, we take care of tomorrow today.

A few facts

• Family business since 1956
• Over 1,600 employees
• Headquarters Kempen, 20 locations, focus on NRW
• Over 850 disposal vehicles
• For companies, municipalities, citizens
• Innovative disposal services
• Certified waste management company according to KrWG

History

Hardly anyone talked about environmental protection in 1956. But Josefine and Theo Schönmackers recognized how important the topic of sustainability would one day become. Your idea of ​​a company that serves the customer and the environment in equal measure has come true.

50s

1956. For the first time the sales of a record reached the million mark: "Homesick" is the name of Freddy Quinn's hit. The post-war period is slowly disappearing and giving way to the economic miracle. 

The district town of Kempen on the Lower Rhine also showed initial prosperity and progress. So it no longer fitted in with the times when ashes and rubbish were still being collected by a horse-drawn wagon with a lot of dust. “Dust-free garbage disposal” was the keyword under which the new age of disposal was to be introduced. A corresponding council resolution was issued on November 4th, 1955, the deadline was to be April 1st, 1956. Here, the city of Kempen decided - unlike the neighboring Krefeld - to commission a private entrepreneur and publicly advertised the "dust-free garbage collection".

But the official mills did not grind as quickly. The timely procurement of the garbage cans caused difficulties, it was clear that the start of the "dust-free garbage collection" had to be postponed. In the meantime, five applicants were being interviewed - none of them were called Schönmackers. As a man of quick decisions, Theo Schönmackers submitted his offer in April 1956, a few days before the decisive council meeting - and was successful.

Until now, the firm of the Schönmackers brothers, founded shortly after the end of the war, was a pure forwarding company specializing in coal and agricultural goods. Now it has been expanded to include the "garbage collection" division. Theo Schönmackers had just two months to order a new KUKA garbage truck and to recruit two employees, Karl-Heinz Rixen and “Hansi” Vohwinkel. In 1956, the horses were retired and the first dust-free garbage collection drove through the streets. That was the beginning of today's company.

1960s

1965. Actually, the world is still in order in the Federal Republic. Erhard has meanwhile replaced Adenauer as Federal Chancellor , but the "old man" is still busy pulling the strings from Rhöndorf. The economy is booming, so the year before they started to recruit more foreign workers - the million mark has already been exceeded.

In the shipping company of the Schönmackers brothers, the garbage collection area had grown considerably - half of the vehicle fleet consisted of garbage trucks. In the meantime Theo Schönmackers also took care of the garbage collection in Kevelaer and Weeze. But the brothers' joint work was never entirely without tension. So it was decided to split up on August 1st, 1965:

Gottfried Schönmackers kept the shipping company and moved to another company site in Kaldenkirchen. Theo Schönmackers stayed in Kempen and concentrated on garbage collection.

Theo Schönmackers KG - Niederrheinischer Müll- und Spezialbetrieb für Stadtreinigung - as the company was now called, had 20 employees, nine garbage trucks, a sweeper and a 5 t truck for the removal of bulky goods.

After his son Bernd Schönmackers had completed his apprenticeship in freight forwarding in 1967, he took over in his parents' company.

1970s

Wild butts, with all conceivable nuisances, including the environmental dangers they pose, have finally roused politicians. After lengthy and difficult deliberations, the federal government passed an amendment to the Basic Law in March 1972, which created the reorganization of environmental protection and thus also the legal prerequisites for standardizing waste disposal. On June 11th, 1972 the first waste law of the FRG comes into force.

Fundamental decisions for the further development of the company were made in the Schönmackers family business in the 1970s. The garbage collection of Schönmackers became more professional. With the increase in the disposal areas, the tasks grew, so that on January 1st, 1971, the first permanent employee, Heinz-Dieter Marx, - later General Manager - came to the company.

The now 40 employees were still performing their services from Kempen. But with the takeover of garbage disposal in the city of Goch in 1971, the difficulties became so great that four garbage trucks and their staff had to be housed with a farmer in Weeze-Wemb. One can argue whether this, the establishment of an office in the chicken coop of the farmer in the middle of 73 or the move into the later Weeze facility on December 1st, 1973 was the founding date of the first branch of the Schönmackers company. A decisive step for the company was the expansion of the range of services to include liquid disposal.

In 1972, Bernd Schönmackers took over the FÄKA-Langhans company with three employees. FÄKA's area of ​​work, initially only emptying the pit, was expanded rapidly. Large sewer cleaning jobs were quickly added to municipalities and businesses. In the mid-1970s, the Club of Rome's impact on the waste industry took off.

80s

Health and the environment are two issues that people were very interested in in the 1980s. In the 1980s, the focus of waste legislation was fundamentally changed. For the Waste Disposal Act, the Waste Management Act comes into force on November 1st, 1986. The goals of modern waste management are defined in a hierarchy: 1. avoidance, 2. recovery and only 3. environmentally friendly disposal of unavoidable and non-recyclable waste. The new Waste Act empowers the federal government to issue ordinances and administrative regulations. This happens in 1987 with the waste oil regulation,

The 80s were a decade with many high points for the Schönmackers company. Urban cleaning developed into environmental services, modern technology developed and achieved a significant growth spurt. The hazardous waste area consolidated. As early as 1983, a pollutant collection station and the special containers still used today for collecting
hazardous waste were purchased.

In 1981 Schönmackers started his adventure “Green recycling bin”. With the aim of collecting as many recyclable materials as possible and keeping them away from the landfill, they confidently took a different path than the other waste disposal companies. Being a recycling pioneer didn't just bring praise. The company was accompanied by a lot of skepticism and resentment among the population during this hot phase. But the “green recycling bin” venture was the beginning of a separate collection of recyclable materials, as is carried out nationwide today.

In the mid-80s, they gave themselves a new image. In 1985 the first trucks were painted in Schönmackers green. A sign of a company that saw itself as a competent service provider for the environment.

90s

Environmental awareness has become commonplace: you sort waste, write on waste paper and pile up compost heaps in your own garden . The “Green Dot”, with which industry and trade have regulated the return and recycling of packaging, may not be the ideal solution for waste avoidance, but it turns out to be by far the most practicable - and especially in this decade, pragmatism clearly takes precedence over utopias.

The Recycling and Waste Management Act of 27.09.1994, which has been in force since October 1996, brought a new dimension to waste policy. The purpose of the law is to promote the circular economy in order to conserve natural resources and to ensure the environmentally friendly disposal of waste. The polluter pays principle is enforced here: the economy and consumers are forced to think about future waste and its avoidance or recycling as early as the production or consumption stage.

The dual system and the opening up in the east gave the waste disposal industry a boost, but at the same time the concentration processes in the market intensified. Schönmackers countered the tougher competition with a reorganization of the company structure, among other things. On 01.01.1992 the phase of restructuring was continued with the independence of the former branches under the roof of the newly founded Schönmackers GmbH & Co. KG and ended with the completed structure on 01.01.1994. This was also documented by a “last” move of the Kempen parent company to Hooghe Weg in 1993.

Theo Schönmackers, senior partner, died on April 27th, 1999 at the age of 90.

2000s

The fundamental change in waste management towards an environmentally friendly and sustainable circular economy was continued by the Commercial Waste Ordinance that came into force on 01.01.2003.

The aim of the Commercial Waste Ordinance is to increase the requirements for the recovery of commercial municipal waste. A harmless and high-quality material or energetic recovery of the commercial municipal waste should be guaranteed.

On January 1st, 2000, Schönmackers introduced an identification and weighing system in Geldern for a total of around 12,000 containers. Citizens have two container volumes available: 120 L and 240 L. The system itself is based on the weight recording of residual waste. Every single bin is identified during the emptying process. This means that every barrel is provided with a chip and weighed.

Schönmacker's environmental services continue to dispose of Kempen. According to the decision of the council of September 12th, 2000, the cheapest provider will also take over the future disposal of the city of Kempen, the company's headquarters.

2010s

Digitization in all its facets is the keyword of the 2010s. More and more online programs support businesses and citizens in meeting legal obligations. This creates a large number of improved and new services .

Waste management is also developing rapidly and Schönmackers is always at the forefront of all innovations. With its online portals, the waste management company supports its customers, for example, with electronic records and the fulfillment of official documentation obligations.

Each innovation serves to avoid waste as well as efficient recycling and is an important piece of the puzzle in improving environmental and climate protection. New technologies as well as modern sorting, processing and recycling processes ensure that as much waste as possible becomes recyclable again.

In 2017, Schönmackers put a new unpacking system into operation at the Düsseldorf location for the recycling of packaged and unpacked leftover food and organic waste. The machine separates and mashes packaged and unpackaged food residues and organic waste in large formats, the food residues are finely ground and recycled. The resulting mass can be recycled as biogas, for example, and is suitable, among other things, in biogas fermentation for the production of electricity or fats are recovered in a processing step. These fats can be used to make biodiesel.

The company itself is also evolving. Bernd Schönmackers and his daughter Gloria Sophie have been running the company together since 2014. The company will therefore remain family-run in the future. At the turn of 2017, the new location in Mechernich was opened on an area of ​​around 30,000 square meters. Here Schönmackers bundles the activities of the three companies previously located in the district of Euskirchen, Blankenheim, Euskirchen and Monschau, thus a further step towards sustainable action.

Today, 70 years after the "dust-free waste collection" began, the company has over 1,600 employees, 20 locations and over 850 vehicles. Personal leadership, human thinking and action and a corporate policy that is independent of the group have proven their worth. It is no coincidence that the Schönmackers company is a well-known and efficient waste disposal company today.

In this way we serve citizens, customers and the environment in equal measure and, as a responsible company in the circular economy, make a significant contribution to the protection of our living space.