Step one: virtually eliminate uneccesary plastic so there's far less waste and ideally most is of the type that can be recycled.

I've not been in Germany for a long while, but I was impressed when last there by a near complete absence of excess packaging, nails in big boxes sold by weight rather than pre sorted into tiny plastic packets, etc.

No idea if they kept that up.

Addendum: Apparently so, and they have 5 types of household bins for seperating waste: https://greenendeavour.com.au/is-germanys-waste-management-s...