Getting to Zero Waste: Reality Check
Zero Waste = The 2020 target:

Alternatives for the Waste Industry
Paper for the 2006 Berlin Waste Conference by Sylvia Kotting-Uhl, MdB, environmental policy spokeswoman of the Alliance 90/The Greens parliamentary group in the German Bundestag, and Dr. Michael Weltzin:

…(page 8) The implementation of the Ordinance on Environmentally Compatible Storage of Waste from Human Settlements and on Biological Waste Treatment Facilities by the SPD-Green German Federal Government on 1 June 2005 was a milestone in waste management policy.

It was a decisive point along the path that will end forever the “burying and forgetting” of waste from human settlements in landfill sites and so finally consign this least sustainable form of waste disposal to “history”.

However, the Ordinance on Environmentally Compatible Storage of Waste from Human Settlements and on Biological Waste Treatment Facilities was just a first stage on this path and raises questions about the way forward from here and the further objectives we should be pursuing.

Alliance 90/The Greens are campaigning to end completely the surface disposal of waste from human settlements on landfill sites by 2020.

This ambitious target presupposes the complete recovery or sorting of waste from human settlements. A look at what is already technically possible today soon makes it clear that the 2020 target is not utopian, but a genuinely realistic objective.

These days, waste from human settlements can already be sorted fully automatically and, consequently, the valuable substances it contains almost completely recovered.

Not only can the sorting residues that are left over be used to generate energy in waste incineration plants operated to very high standards, the by-products of waste incineration can also be reused. Slags are now attaining levels of quality that permit at least their limited emplacement without protective measures, for example in road construction. The reusable products of waste incineration include high-quality hydrochloric acid and gypsum for use in the construction materials industry.

The calculations assume that, in line with the latest developments in technical capabilities, the only unrecoverable residual substances that would remain from what was originally one ton of waste from human settlements would be about 20 kilograms of boiler and filter dust and 7 kilograms of mixed brine.

This means that, overall, less than one percent of the original volume of the waste would be left over and would actually have to be “disposed of” by classic methods (underground). The subsequent sorting and reuse of products from the incineration of sorting residues would be decisive for the complete recovery of waste from human settlements.

In this respect, we Greens want to make sure German policy is heading in the right direction in good time.

For us, it is one of the main aspirations of sustainable waste management that we should not leave the generations who follow us any more landfill sites full of rubbish.
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