The German Experience
Germany:

Waste Management in Germany by Dr. Helmut Schnurer:

From 1998 until 2005 Dr. Schnurer was the Deputy General of the German Federal Ministry of the Environment. Dr. Schnurer is one of the Kyoto originators. Today, he still plays a leading role in the European Waste Management.
View Presentations here:

1. “German regulatory Perspective - Presentation”

Regulations on Waste Management: The situation in Germany, by Dr. Helmut Schnurer (April 2006)

Excerpt:
The situation of waste disposal has changed totally in Germany over the past 30 years. Until the early 70th almost all types of waste have been dumped in an uncontrolled way, leading to approximately 50.000 waste dumps in the outskirts of all larger towns or villages in the Federal Republic of Germany. More or less all type of wastes have been dumped there. However, an increased standard of living not only increased the amounts of waste being generated by households or commercial enterprises and industry, but also increased types and quantities of hazardous substances like heavy metals and a big variety of chemical substances in most of our waste streams. This led to increased environmental problems, e. g. contamination of ground water, surface water and rivers, the sea, as well as air pollution due to landfill gases and emissions from waste incinerators and other waste treatment facilities.
Full Text: “German Perspective - Regulations on Waste Management”

Sustainable Waste Policy: Waste Policy of Alliance 90/The Greens in the German Parliament by Dr. Michael Weltzin:

In June 2008 Dr. Weltzin started a new position within the German Green Party. He is now the Senior Advisor on Climate Policy and Economic Instruments of the Environmental Policy of the Green Party. Before taking the new position Dr. Weltzin was the Senior Advisor for Waste policy to the German Green Party. He was responsible for waste policy, chemistry, water policy and renewable resources. He obtained his PHD in groundwater remediation technology at the Technical University Aachen, Germany.
View Presentation here “M Weltzin – German Green Party Waste Policy”

Municipal Solid Waste Treatment technologies, emission, and location of facilities etc – Excerpts from a Briefing, Dr. Gleis, Dr. Weltzin and Dr. Schnurer, Hamburg, Germany, June 2008:

Dr. Gleis: As a member of the scientific staff of the Federal Environmental Agency, I have work unobstructed in the field of environmental treatment for the past 20 years – technical transfer – and to show what we have done here in the last 20 years and it is not only a question of Germany, but it is also a question of the European Union. Through legislation emissions are tightly controlled. The federal required emission standards at the Advanced Thermal Recycling facility that we have seen today are no longer only the national standards from Germany, but since 2000 they are also the standards of the European Union for the incineration of waste all over the European countries, and by this we have done some very hard work of the question of that is the way of control technology. We have spent much time on identifying Best Available Technology. Since 2005 this information is available via the Internet. The report has more than 600 pages and was published in Canada a couple of months ago. It is written in English, but it is not so well known in Canada or the United States, especially the question of other technologies than incineration. You can find there are only some little pages about gasification or Pyrolysis because they are techniques, which are not considered as state of the art in Germany and all over the European countries. We have had enough experiences and we have spent, I think, over four hundred million dollars on questions of gasification and at the moment we have only one Pyrolysis plants, but no gasification plants and one shouldn’t make the same mistakes spending money on any of these technologies that we did in the past 20 or 25 years to make fuel out of waste when we have identified incineration as the best working technology.

…When you take a close look at the Advanced Thermal Recycling process you will note that nearly 98% of the out coming material is reusable. Even with a high recycling rate we are taking out the materials even before the waste is incinerated (mostly through household sorting) and even after incineration and also if you look very precisely you can notice that the slag is of very high quality for example for the use in road construction.. It is only a question of the money you would spend, and we have some processes for slag and taking out nearly everything, but this becomes more expensive, but you will have any technical supervision to do so if you are very interested. We also started with road projects on the question of eco-toxic effects of slag and we noticed that even if the slag is older than three months, you have very diffuse eco-toxic effects if you do this, especially on the question that you normally are not able to find every compound in such a material, but if you have a testing system which shows you the environmental behavior of this material, then you can be sure. Only by knowing everything which can be inside, you know the effect on the environment. This is the reason why we are working so hard on this question of environmental testing and slag is one of the examples we have spend a lot of time on with very good results.

Dr. Schnurer: Perhaps I should add one remark. The slag obviously substitutes natural products for sand or gravel and on environmental terms it is a good possibility because digging out sand or gravel from the ground again creates environmental problems. However, you can see the negative side where people are very anxious that the slag might create any harm to the groundwater, so you have to guarantee a high quality of this bottom ash if it is used for construction purposes, for road construction or for recalculation processes. As mentioned, to a large degree this has been done practically in Germany for the past 20 years.

Dr. Schnurer: I like to add that during my more than 20 years practical experience in the Federal Ministry for the Environment, in the beginning we had serious problems with acceptance of incinerators and also with composting plants, everything which might smell or emit certain substances which people don’t like. However, I think there are, let’s say, four major reasons why, in the meantime, we have agreed to a large degree, not 100%, but to a large degree of the necessity of these facilities. The first was, I think, that a waste-to-energy facility does not disturb our primary goals of avoidance and recycling. This can be seen from the fact that most cities which have waste-to-energy facilities also have the highest recycling quotas, so it is not to have either recycling or incineration, but if a municipality wants to decide on such a waste management scheme and if it is environmentally friendly they have recycling and a waste to energy facility. This is the first reason. The second reason, as Michael, I think, has already explained, was to decide on very, very stringent emission values so that we can prove that incinerating waste does not affect the environment. And of course the third reason is that this had to be made transparent to our citizens, so most municipalities offer opportunities that every citizen can look on his computer and see what is the emission of today of this or that substance. I think there is a fourth important reason: we need some witnesses who prove that this is a good solution, and I think one of our best witnesses was my former minister, Minister Tritin who was a member of the Green Party, and we succeeded in convincing him that going for avoiding, recycling, and waste-to-energy is a good solution and he made statements to the public that being a member of the Green Party, he can confess that this is a good solution for the environment because everyday waste will be generated and we have to find a solution. Just to say lets avoid all the ways which is not possible because recycling in environmentally sound ways is not possible 100%, so we need this solution and he convinced not all but many members of the Green Party that this is an environmentally friendly solution for our country.

Dr. Gleis: I like to address the concept of recycling. Recycling a product is just a question of energy balances. If you need more energy for recycling the material than you get from the material then you shouldn’t do something like this because if you spend energy on something which is not helpful because it won’t get any good recycling products then you have spent energy and you have waste CO2, too, because spending energy means also producing CO2 emissions. It is better to take out and we have high quotas, especially for paper and even for glass, more than 80% and nearly 90% for this material and especially the problem we also looking onto the question of plastics where we have a different separated system for the collection of plastics, but even this material is not so easy to handle. If you go for cardboard and paper, you have very good effects. Most of the governmental organizations use only recycling paper. I’ve never noticed this is done in the United States, and for glass, we have not only glass recycling, but also a huge bring back systems for glass for example. We only incinerate the rest that is not so helpful to do any recycling because if you need more energy for recycling, then you will take out it does not make any sense. This is the experience of more than 20 years and we have done very much research work. I think they spent one hundred to two (hundred) million dollars to look very precisely where you can recycle and where it is better to incinerate, because at the end, the incineration is also a form of recovery. It is not recycling, but even in the European Union it’s seen as recovery and you then take the rest of the energy out of the waste you can get and you are able to recycle, for example, the metals, the ferrous and non-ferrous metals. In fact, here you have also a CO2 reduction because you can bring it very directly back in the process of melting of metal materials, and we have done so much. For example, if you look, it is not only Germany, you can go to Switzerland and you have nearly the same system. Nearly 100% of the rest of the waste they are not able to recycle is incinerated and they have high recycling quotas, like in Germany. Incinerators are very well accepted. If you, for example go to Zürich (airport), you have only to cross the street, on the one side is the incinerator and on another side is a housing area. Therefore, I think Switzerland is not a country where they want to get risk for their inhabitants. Therefore, I think that the discussion in the last 20 years in the United States regarding waste incineration or other thermal treatment of waste is not based on realistic data. I have noticed the same in Montreal and a recent conference, many are looking just for technologies, which are not called incineration, but you are looking for other technologies, which may be not ready for at least the next 10 to 20 years, and by this way you have to continue to landfill and then you risk much higher greenhouse emissions from landfills. It was the same experience we had with the Thermoselect plant in Karlsruhe. They didn’t begin their work as they tried to do, and for more than two years the waste was still brought to the landfill. Then landfilling was stopped and had to be incinerated at another place.

Dr. Weltzin: On the concept of waste management, technologies etc I would like to add because it is a very important point. Of course our entire green concept is not waste to energy alone, so we have a very different concept and it is not only recycling. First of all, our target is waste avoidance and reuse and the second one is recycling and then waste-to-energy. So we just see it as a necessary part of a waste management system and I think that is very important. So, our primary target, of course, is waste avoidance and that is the question: how to handle this and how can we move into this issue and what we want. We want to go in the direction of producer or product responsibility, so we have it already in Germany in some sectors, packaging or electronic devices or cars, we have something like this, and this is our idea to go to producer responsibility to all products, you know, to bring the producer into the situation that he has to think, “What is going on with my product when it becomes waste?” Of course, this is the first thing. You have to go into the production process and not look at the end of the pipe, go right into the beginning. But I think it is not an opposite to incineration, but even if you do, re-use of course if we re-use products it is waste. Even if you recycle, you recycle for one or two times and after you have recycled two times it is becoming waste and what is going on then? And then you have the possibility for landfill or we say and then go to waste-to-energy and recover the waste. In a few words, this is our concept. It is important to say that it is not only waste-to-energy, but it fits perfectly in such a system.

Dr. Schnurer: I think if we talk about such an issue, we should not only talk about what is the input into such a facility, but what is the output. It is optimal what is done through the Advanced Thermal Recycling process. It is the best available technology which is available in Europe. The output, which cannot be used, as an energy substitution of fuel or a substitution of raw materials, is very, very small. We have another facility in the City of Cologne, for instance, which has been built a few years ago. They have a pre-sorting device before the waste-to-energy facility which is intended to pre-sort plastic and metals. But they don’t use the plastic separation because it turns out that the plastic that you sort out from the wet waste, nobody wants to have it. So you have sorted it out and you have it in your hands, but you have no market for this material. So the only choice you have is to incinerate it or whatever it becomes. So if you use this mixed material, which is contaminated by food for instance, and use the energy content of this material, you are doing a good job. On the other side you also have in mind a higher degree of recycling depends on the will of your citizens to separate and collect this material and you will never achieve 100% separate collection. Anyhow, in the grey bin, as we call it, you always will find things which should not be there, yet by our investigations, I can say that our citizens are very engaged in separate collection. When I think about my house, I think I would have almost 20 different separate collection boxes, including pharmaceutical products, electric equipment, plastic, metal, glass and so on, shoes, old clothes and so on. Nevertheless, investigation by universities have shown that in the gray bin, which is the residual base, there is almost the same amount of packaging material compared to what is collected by a special separate collection, so you should think about what could be done in order to increase, and we have achieved for household waste a recovery rate of 72% in Germany all over the country, although this is a little bit different from one region to another. But 72%, I think, is a quite good result, and it is hard to imagine that this could be increased further. What could be done is to have eco-balances to make scientific research or to see what effort is needed in order to get a higher result. What are the consequences in terms of energy-producing climate-damaging gases? For instance, for paper recycling we have done such investigation by our federal environment agencies some years ago, which turns out that the 80% we have achieved up to now is more or less the optimum. We feel that if we increased this recycling rate of paper, it would have a negative impact to the environment. So we say let’s use the residual 20% as an energy source. What we decided some years ago is not to allow that such materials go to a landfill. We have closed the way to the landfill waste, which contains organic substances, which could be used as an energy source, and compels them to go today into waste-to-energy.

Dr. Schnurer: It is very important to keep the right hierarchy of avoidance, reuse, recycling, recovery, and landfill.

Dr. Gleis: It is the same scheme adopted by the European Union in the new waste legislation which we discussed last week in the European Parliament. After material recovery, the next is the use of the energy content in the waste and then you had to dump it. It’s the last step in a five-step system.

Dr. Schnurer: The statistics show that the average American produces, I think, twice or three times the amount of trash compared to citizens of our country, so if you have at least 60% recycling and you are producing twice the amount of trash, you are only comparing to 30 percent to what we are doing. There are obviously quite a lot of things which can be done in order to avoid the significant production of waste.

Dr. Gleis: Going back to the question of which technology to use for the remainder of the waste it is difficult to compare Advanced Thermal Recycling with other technologies such as gasification, plasma arc, Pyrolysis etc because you can’t compare a system which is working with a system which is only in a pilot state. That is the underlying problem. Normally all the systems do have to reach the same emission standards, especially for dioxins, which from the heavy metals which are the highest toxic compounds which are found in the flue gas for example, and if looking at the emissions from an Advanced Thermal Recycling facility, one will notice that this process is in reality much below the federal and local emission standards. The emissions were so slight by our very high sophisticated standards that there is in general no risk for the population. Even in 1993, the German doctors published a paper all over Germany that there is no hazard risk from a waste incinerator, which meets the standard of the 17th German Emission Regulation and that it is the same for the European Union on the legislation of waste incineration for all the member states. Therefore, I think it is not a question of the technique; it is just a question that a technology is able to reach the emission standards and in reality ATR has reached 10% of these emission standards. You have a very sophisticated control system which allows for 24/7 monitoring of every emission. Emissions are not only monitored by the operator but by the local air emission agency. They have independent organizations which are still controlling the emission standards and the owner or operator of the plant has an independently government verified annual report to show that all these emission standards are maintained. There is even a continuous measurement of emissions which allows online monitoring by the government 24/7 365. On the other hand it is difficult when looking at a pilot plant, for example. The owners/operators of these kinds of facilities will offer you a lot of hypothetical data as it might be reached sometime in the future, but due to lack of continuous operations they can not provide emission data for 8,000 consecutive hours a year as is standard from a normal incinerator. And there is no other system which is able to work more than 4,000 hours a year. Not even Thermoselect, neither in Germany nor, as far as I have heard, in Japan. There is a plasma arc system in Montreal that was built for the U.S. Navy just to compact materials on ships, but they need so much energy and normally there are so many failures. For example they have a big problem dealing with the electrodes. I have been looking for more than 20 years for such a system. Is it really working? The first time was in 1987 when I went to the United States to have a precise look on the Westinghouse plasma arc. At a conference in Montreal this year I was merely offered the same information they gave us 20 years ago.

Dr. Schnurer: I think we cannot compare the emissions because we have no practical experience with such alternatives. We only have practical experience with facilities, which for example ATR, and they cope. ATR is very well below the leading standards and if other technologies want to cope with these standards of technology, I think they have to work very hard.

Dr. Gleis: There has been a change in the gas cleaning system which is fitted to an incinerator, but it is not the experience of the last 26 years or the last 25 years, especially on the question of dioxin emission. The federal government spent more than 200 million dollars just to have a precise look on several dioxin streams inside such a plant to look if you have some pretreatment technology or if you can only use some secondary measures like specialized gas cleaning systems, and at the end you have, today it is a question of temperature of and essentially the time, but especially the question in which way you work on dust collection because we notice that some of the electrostatic precipitators because you have a higher dioxin emission in the flue gas within the dedusting system than before. Therefore, we looked for a better temperature to drive the systems and at the end you have several dedusting systems, adding activated coal, for example, at the end, you have a very sophisticated gas cleaning to get to slow the dioxin admissions and by this way, it was also able to lower for example the mercury emission, which is also a very difficult problem on the question of waste incineration, but as you notice in the United States not only a question of waste incineration but also the question of incineration of hard coal for example. You have even there so much mercury emission burning hard coal and by this at the moment I heard that some of the techniques which are prepared for waste incineration are now used in the United States to reduce the mercury emission from power plants. Therefore, you see that this (ATR) is the research work of over 20 years to get BAT (Best Available Technology) solution on the question of permanent waste treatment.

Dr. Schnurer: In regards to the reduction of emissions, we should not only talk about end-of-the-pipe technologies, you know, that is the reason why the federal government has funded scientific research, for instance, at our biggest research center, Karlsruhe. They have built a small test facility, TAMARA, which has been used in order to verify a different type of waste and different geometry of the incineration compartment and they found quite interesting results that it is possible by whatever designed of such a facility to reduce the production of hazardous substances like dioxins, air leaks, and so on. In parallel, I have developed an online test device for mercury emissions, so it is possible to measure the emissions of mercury online, not only from time to time, but continuously. So you should see that trying to improve the technology of incinerating waste together with off-gas treatment can bring good results. As Michael mentioned, presently, of course, there is a big discussion that energy has become very expensive for some energy so the municipalities or the private owners of such facilities try to use flexibility, which are all on legal basis, first to keep down the costs, to keep down the emission of CO2, and maybe to allow a little bit higher emissions of substances, but this has to be seen on a relative level. If you compare the emissions with a coal-fired power station, this is not much, much higher. If you compare it with an industrial facility, the copper production facility, then it might be a little bit higher, the emission.

Dr. Schnurer: Regarding the location of waste management facilities we have a lot of them located in the cities, because it is more practical. For instance, I worked at one, the Rhine River, and the waste incinerator is one or two blocks away from the central station in a very crowded area. I have never heard of any problems. A similar facility in Cologne, which produces steam for the Ford Motor Company, a car production facility, the siteing of such a facility should take into account using the heat and electricity. Electricity is not so much of a problem because it can be transported quite easily, but you should find a site which offers an opportunity also for using the heat. This has been done, I think, in some parts of Germany.

Federal Ministry of the Environment: June 2005: no more untreated waste deposited on landfills:

As of 1 June 2005, untreated waste in Germany may no longer be deposited to landfills. Waste that has been pre-treated mechanically and/or biologically and/or by incineration can be stored ecologically on landfills. How does a country that is considered the world leader in environmental protection substantiate its achievements? Read full article here: “June 2005 - no more untreated waste deposited on landfills”

How waste treatment relates to emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and why Germany enacted a law that banns untreated waste in landfills:
As of 1 June 2005, untreated waste in Germany may no longer be deposited to landfills. Waste that has been pre-treated mechanically/ biologically or by incineration can be stored ecologically on landfills, thereby avoiding the placement of ticking time bombs in the soil at long last. Since this process can also help prevent the production of landfill gases that damage the climate, it makes a considerable contribution to climate protection. Furthermore, quite a bit of the waste is recyclable after pre-treatment, thereby saving non-renewable resources and relieving the burden placed on landfills. Along with many other measures implemented in recent years, this is proof that the move away from a mentality of “disposability” in Germany to one of recycling is the result of successful environmental policy. For the first time there is tangible proof of this, issued by the ifeu Institute in Heidelberg on behalf of the Federal Environment Agency for the years 1990-2001.
Read "June 2005 - no more untreated waste deposited on landfills” by the German Federal Ministry of the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety and “Letter Dr. C Bergs BMU on GHGs.”

German Green Party Statement on Waste Disposal to King County Council Member Kathy Lambert, Washington State, May 25th 2007: "Disposing of waste in landfills is not a solution. It is the most unsustainable way of waste treatment..."

Excerpt:
This 2020 target is not an utopian goal, it is a realistic objective:

• Waste can already be sorted fully automatically and the valuable substances can almost completely be recovered.

• Sorting residues that are left over can be used to generate energy in waste incineration plants operated by very high standards. The different by-products of waste incineration can also be reused (for example the waste incineration facility in Hamburg at Rugenberger Damm).

For us it is not comprehensible, that waste disposal in landfill sites should bring a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by low costs. It is the opposite of the wide accepted knowledge in Europe and Germany, that recovery and treatment are essential elements of a sustainable waste and environmental policy.
Read statement here: “Waste Disposal Position of Alliance90-The Greens”

Environmental Study: “Waste Sector’s Contribution to Climate Protection"
The findings of this study show clearly that the municipal waste sector makes a significant contribution to achieving the climate protection objectives in Germany. Especially through the ban on landfill of untreated waste and the resulting reduction in methane emissions, the waste sector accounts for a large share – 20 % – of the reductions achieved to date.
Read the Entire Paper here: “Environmental Study - Waste Sectors Contribution to Climate Protection”

Waste Incineration – A Potential Danger: Bidding Farewell to Dioxin Sprouting
Article by the German Federal Ministry of the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety on Dioxin:

In the eighties of the previous century, waste incineration plants (WIPs) came to be the symbol of environmental contamination: citizens were beginning to put up a fight against the throw-away society and 'dioxin spouting' on the outskirts of cities. That protest was a success. Today, more than half of all household waste (65%) is recycled as bio-waste, waste paper, waste glass, or packaging waste. Since June 1, 2005, untreated waste is no longer landfilled.

And because of stringent regulations (cf. the chapters at the end of this paper), waste incineration plants are no longer significant in terms of emissions of dioxins, dust, and heavy metals. And this still applies even though waste incineration capacity has almost doubled since 1985.
Read the Entire Paper here: “BMU - Dioxin and WTE”

Tackling the waste
Sigmar Gabriel, the German Minister of the Environment, outlines national innovations and approaches to waste management...
“Our waste policy is based on three pillars: Avoidance, Recovery and Disposal.” Read the Entire Paper here: “Siegmar Gabriel - Tackling the waste - English version”.

Comparison: Landfilling, Waste-to-Energy and Mechanical Biological Treatment:
How do they compare at Best Available Practices?
Of special interest:
Slide 28 – Ecological Fingerprint &
Slide 38 – Greenhouse Effect
View the Entire BASF study “Eco - efficiency analysis – BASF.”