Germany – Environment minister marks an end to the above-ground storage of biodegradable waste

From waste management to substance flow management – Federal Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin gave the following interesting address and review to an audience in Leipzig a few weeks ago. Jürgen Trittin



Today definitely marks an end to the above-ground storage of un-pretreated domestic waste and other biodegradable waste.



The century-long era of burying and forgetting waste comes to an end today. We do not have the right to burden our children and grandchildren with the incalculable risks to soils and to the ground water and with the exorbitant costs for the rehabilitation of damage to the environment.



Today, we celebrate a paradigm shift with quite a long history.



I. History



At the end of the 80s, terms such as “break-down in waste management” and “emergency waste problem” were coined with good reason. Polluted soils, contaminated ground water and climate-damaging landfill gas were pressing problems at the time. What was required was the political will to tackle ecological modernization. Only the treatment of waste before landfilling brings safety, as the German Advisory Council for the Environment stated in its special report on waste management in 1990. This is the reason why Klaus Töpfer created the Technical Instruction on Waste from Human Settlements (TA Siedlungsabfall) in 1993. This was progress, which, however, was slowed down by two impediments:



· A twelve-year transition period – which corresponds to three electoral terms or the total duration of school education

· the fact that it was not landfill operators and waste producers that were obliged to pursue an ecological policy, but only the authorities



With the Ordinance on the Environmentally Compatible Storage of Waste from Human Settlements of 2001, the red-green government laid the foundations for ecological progress in practice.



· the Waste Storage Ordinance is binding for all parties involved

· it does not grant any extensions of time

· it offers free choice between waste incineration plants and state-of-the-art mechanical-biological pre-treatment facilities with thermal treatment. This freedom of choice was important for the acceptance of the Ordinance



Since the ruling of the European Court of Justice on the Deponiezweckverband Eiterköpfe (Association of municipalities for the operation of landfills) of 14 April 2005, it is fully justified to state that the new German Waste Storage Ordinance is more ambitious than the European Union Landfill Directive, but still in line with European law.



The Waste Storage Ordinance has given rise to remarkable innovations. Simple open digesters developed into technologically elaborate waste factories, which facilitate the separation and recovery of waste to a large extent. At the beginning of the 90s, there were only a handful of ecologically insufficient plants for mechanical-biological treatment with low throughput rates. By 2007, 66 modern plants with a planned combined capacity of more than 7 million tons will be in operation. The latest – and biggest – was opened in Cröbern this morning.



About 200 existing ecologically problematic landfill sites will be closed in the short term because of the new Ordinance. Others will close down by 2009. This process of reduction is a big asset both for the environment and for the tax-payer. The risks emanating from these landfills by far exceed the necessary investments for waste treatment.



The number of waste incineration plants will increase from 48 (in 1990) to 72 by 2007. The capacity for thermal treatment will thus be almost doubled (to about 18 million tons) compared to 1990 levels. In addition, a large number of composting plants, fermentation plants and other waste recovery plants have been built in the past few years.



In principle, the plants available are sufficient for all waste arisings from households waste, industrial wa