I thought the universal solution was a chute for rubbish to be thrown down ultimately landing in an external bin outside the bottom of the building?

The universal solution is also great for spreading fire. In many places the trash chute violates fire code

I never really gave this much thought as I never lived in a building that uses a chute. But it does make sense. You can build a large building, but it usually has many firestops in it. When wiring crosses a firestop, it must be sealed up to some standards. Ventilation systems are kept isolated across firestops as well. Anything that could encourage a spread is forbidden.

In contrast, a fire chute is basically a giant convection tower that should spread smoke and heat across all the higher floors of a building immediately.

It's possible to apply the same fire solutions used for elevators and stair wells to garbage chutes. Build them separately out of cinder block towers and use UL rated doors.

While you are right, that is easily circumvented by someone propping the chute door open.

In my building people kept throwing glass down the chute, which explodes at the bottom and injured some employees working around there. It was poorly designed, and after two injuries they welded the chutes shut and put in a trash can on every floor. I still think trash chutes are a good idea, but they have to be implemented properly.

Garbage chutes are a luxury I've only recently acquired, but it was done well in my opinion at my building. The room is tiny but enclosed with a garbage chute with a closing chute door that has a rubber gasket to seal it. Negatively pressurized so any remaining smells aren't pushed into the hallway. Everything goes down to a compactor in a ventilated utility room. How it's processed from there, I'm not sure but smell certainly isn't an issue.

I lived in a recently-built high-rise in the U.S. that had a trash chute. A problem is that bags tear open easily, people throw away liquids in their bags (which leak even without tears). I've seen trails of trash juice leading from people's apartments to the trash chute, and even with the ventilation, when you open the door to the trash chute, it smells and it's dirty (because of torn bags, and the fact that the chute hatch is smaller than the average full trash bag, meaning you have to squeeze it in, usually causing more tears).

Make bigger trash chute doors, better bags, and smarter people, then trash chutes work. #1 is doable, #2 is hard because it's always a race to the bottom, and #3 is impossible.

Not faced that problem here in Berlin, neither in the the place I'm renting long term now nor in the series of AirBnBs I was in back in 2017 while starting to look for a place.

Whatever Germany is doing, copy it.

I don't think you can copy culture very easily, which is the primary source of the problem being described.

That seems like a problem of going to giant scales. Here in Germany the norm for condos or apartments is 2-5 stories with 1-6 apartments per story. That gives you 2-30 units per building, and at that scale a couple of weekly emptied trash bins on the ground floor or in the parking garage do their job.

This is also a scale where construction and maintenance is straightforward, and where the building makes sense in a walkable neighborhood (as opposed to taking 5 minutes to even leave the buildings).