• Title: An important stage has been reached: Today marks an end to the above-ground storage of biodegradable waste

• Subtitle: Our goal: From waste management to substance flow management
• Speaker: Federal Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin
• Occasion: Key event of the German waste management industry
• Date/Location: 31 May 2005, Leipzig

Ladies and gentlemen,

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,
• And 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 waste similar to household waste and bulky waste. In a few regions, there are temporary interim storage sites, but those are, as I said, only temporary.

Our efforts have been worthwhile: Whereas in 1999, about 60% of residual waste was landfilled without pretreatment, all of the residual waste is pretreated in 2005, three quarters thermally and one quarter mechanically-biologically.

The waste regulations prohibit (in der deutschen Fassung nicht ganz richtig. Die AbfAblV regelt die unten genannten Punkte nicht, daher muss Bezug genommen werden auf das gesamte Regelwerk)

• The previous practice of the cheap dumping of waste from business and industry outside of our borders and
• The export of waste with a high calorific value to cement works, power plants or other industrial combustion plants abroad, which do not comply with the European standards of the Waste Incineration Directives.

II. Far-reaching success of activities so far

Public waste management authorities and the private waste management industry have invested about €10 billion and created about 15,000 permanent jobs. This is an example of sustainable environmental policy and forward-looking economic policy at the same time. The Waste Storage Ordinance has given an enormous boost to the development of waste treatment. Thanks to the Ordinance, Germany has become a strong exporter and a technology leader. The markets are outside and inside of the European Union and thus immediately at our doorstep. The reason is that other countries are still facing huge, unsolved waste management problems.

The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Heidelberg found that the ecological modernisation of municipal waste management has had significant positive effects on the protection of natural resources, the climate, the soils, water bodies and human health.

On the one hand, this is due to the fact that we have treated an increasing percentage of waste over the years, with the recycling rate rising from 12% in 1990 to more than 50% in 2001. Recovery rates of 60 to more than 90% have been reached for glass, paper, cardboard, packaging waste, metals and biowaste. This development has far-reaching consequences: For instance, the production of secondary aluminium saves over 90% of energy costs as compared to smelting bauxite. We have by far the highest recovery rate in the EU. Also I was once concerned that the ban on the above-ground storage of biodegradable waste could reduce the incentive for recovery. As the above-mentioned figures impressively show, these concerns have not come true.

The other reason for the significantly reduced environmental burden is the 17th Ordinance amending the Federal Immission Control Act. By introducing the strictest limit values for waste incineration plants worldwide, it helped to drastically reduce the emission of pollutants from such facilities. The notorious polluters of the 70s and 80s have become modern, environmentally compatible waste incineration plants. Since 1990, the output of carcinogenic substances such as dioxin from waste incineration plants has been reduced to less than one thousandth of 1990 levels. The 17th Ordinance amending the Federal Immission Control Act was therefore the inspiration for the European Waste Incineration Directive. Since its amendment in 2003, the ambitious limit values of the Ordinance also apply to the co-incineration of waste in industrial plants.

The ecological modernisation of the waste management industry constitutes an important contribution to climate protection.

30% of German emissions of climate-damaging methane stem from landfills. By treating waste before consigning it to landfills, these emissions have been reduced by 1 million tons of methane between 1990 and 2004. This corresponds to a reduction of about 21 millions tons of CO2 equivalents - or one sixth of the total reduction of CO2 emissions generated by the industry and the energy supply sector between 1990 and 2003. By 2007, we are expecting a further drop in landfill gas emissions by 4 million tons of CO2 equivalents. Up to 2012, we want to bring methane emissions from landfills to an almost complete standstill (another 4 million tons of CO2 equivalents).

Since about half of the municipal waste is of biogenic nature it can be used for energy production like other waste with a high calorific value and thereby replace fossil fuels. By this means, another 4 million tons of CO2 can be saved.

Emissions trading, which includes cement works, power plants and industrial combustion plants, renders energy recovery from waste economically attractive. A new European market will develop in the next few years. German plant operators, which today are still hesitant in embracing the use of substitute fuels, should make up their minds quickly if they do not want to miss the boat.

III. What has to be done next?

By 2020 at the latest, we have to develop and upgrade treatment technologies in such a way that municipal waste in Germany can be fully recovered in an environmentally compatible way. Only if disposal is carried out in such a fashion that it does not place a burden on future generations is it truly sustainable.

This means that we have to put an end to the above-ground storage of all municipal waste by 2020 because it inevitably requires long-term aftercare measures. This also applies to slags from waste incineration and residues from mechanical-biological treatment. Heavily polluted residues, for example from waste gas purification in treatment plants, have to be stored underground and thereby permanently removed from the biosphere.

In order to significantly step up recovery, we have to further develop the existing structures of waste management in a systematic way. Existing systems for separate collection, in particular for glass, paper, cardboard, biowaste and harmful substances, should be maintained or even enhanced. The automatic sorting of domestic waste can contribute to this. However, it is not an indispensable prerequisite. We are currently analysing trials in which lightweight packaging was collected together with residual waste and the waste sorted afterwards. If it turns out that the "zebra bin" makes sense ecologically and economically, this should be one option besides separate collection. One precondition in addition to the separate collection of biowaste, however, is also a clear agreement on who meets the costs.

The "zebra bin" must not touch upon the basic principle that the responsibility for the disposal of the waste of their citizens remains with the municipalities. In future, the municipalities have to play a decisive role in a regional substance flow management.

IV. Substance flow management is the goal

1 June 2005 is a milestone for waste management - but it has not reached the end of its journey yet. We have to further develop the ideas of responsible resource management and resource efficiency and extend them beyond the field of waste management. Our objective is to integrate the closed substance cycle economy into a sustainable resource-saving substance flow management.

The ecological footprint of mankind has exceeded the biologically productive space by about 20% since the mid-seventies. In order to satisfy our supposed needs, we would need 1.2 planets already today. Instead, we waste natural resources at the cost of generations to come. It is common knowledge that 20% of the world's population consume 80% of the resources and generate 80% of the waste. The earth is already overexploited, although one third of mankind hardly claims resources or is hardly able to. We are still far from sustainable production and sustainable consumption!

The trend goes towards the globalisation of the consumption pattern of the richest 20% of the world's population. Due to the economic development in the newly industrialised countries, the need for raw materials is increasing drastically. For four of the six most important metals, China is already the biggest consumer after the European Union and the USA. Prices for raw materials are increasing. This does have particularly fatal consequences for the development chances of poor countries. Some also consider the security of supply in rich countries to be at risk.

We have to significantly increase the resource efficiency of our goods production - for ecological reasons, but also to remain competitive in a globalised economy. The sustainability strategy calls for doubling efficiency by 2020. This constitutes a challenge for product design and waste management alike. The waste management industry has to considerably strengthen its potential of recovering resources from waste at the best possible quality, or even purely.

In future, we will only remain competitive if we make the development of resource-light technologies a focus of our industrial policy. The extension of the principle of product responsibility has to play an important role in this. This is the reason why the European Commission plans to bring together its political strategies for increasing resource efficiency and for the prevention and recovery of waste.

What we need is an ambitious amendment of the European Directive on Waste. And we need demanding ecological standards for the recovery of the primary waste streams at the European level. After all, we in Germany have reduced the production of climate-damaging emissions alone by about 33 million tons of CO2 equivalents since the implementation of our Waste Storage Ordinance in 2001. In this field, there is still a huge potential for climate protection in Europe.

It is therefore overdue,

• That the EU generally prohibits the landfilling of biodegradable waste,
• That it requires an increase in recycling and modern energy-efficient treatment plants for the remaining residual waste.

We urgently need the planned biowaste directive. We need uniform standards across Europe for the recycling of biowaste.

Waste management is not only about was goes into the rubbish bin, but it is part of substance flows as a whole. We have to further develop it in this integrated fashion. According to Alan Greenspan, resource efficiency is the precondition for competitiveness in the future. Modern waste management is a central element in this.