Waste management: Much reutilisation, hardly any landfilling of waste
Destatis, 28 November 2007
The main goal of waste management is waste avoidance. As a second goal, reuse should always be preferred to disposal. The extent to which those goals have been reached is shown by the waste balance and the so-called reutilisation rates, which have been calculated on the basis of the amount of waste generated, which is obtained as part of the waste balance.
Strong decline in subcomponents of the amount of waste generated
The data on waste delivered to treatment facilities and other information such as on hazardous waste and municipal waste, which come from various data sources, are used at the Federal Statistical Office for waste accounting, that is to compile the waste balance, on the basis of the individual data. The most important components of the total amount of waste generated are the waste groups of municipal wastes, construction and demolition wastes, mining slag, and wastes from production and businesses.
Composition of waste generated
In 2005, 331.9 million tonnes of waste were generated. The quantity of construction wastes (56%) accounts for more than half of the amount of waste generated in Germany. The other sub-quantities of waste are mining slag (16%), wastes from production and businesses (14%) and municipal wastes (14%). All types of waste contain in part hazardous wastes, amounting to a total of 18.5 million tonnes in 2005. While in 2002, 381.2 million tonnes of wastes were delivered to disposal facilities, the figure was down to approximately 366 million tonnes in 2003. In 2005, that quantity further decreased to about 332 million tonnes. The downward trend for the quantity of waste disposed of is mainly due to the decreasing quantity of construction and demolition wastes which, in turn, is due to a decline in construction activity.
Municipal wastes, which accounted for a good 14% (46.6 million tonnes) of the total quantity in 2005, include the wastes from households and the other municipal wastes similar to household waste. In 2005, domestic wastes totalled about 41.4 million tonnes. The quantitative development of domestic wastes indicates changes in the behaviour of private final consumers. Domestic wastes are, for example, household waste and industrial wastes similar to household waste that are collected through public collection of waste, bulk waste, compostable wastes from the bio-bin and fractions collected separately. In the years 2002 to 2005, there was a decrease in the quantity of household waste disposed of and the industrial wastes similar to household waste, collected jointly by public collection of waste. While in 2002, 17.1 million tonnes were collected (or 32% of the total municipal wastes), the figure was just 13.9 million tonnes in 2005, which was just 30% of all municipal wastes. This indicates that the people’s awareness of the reusability of wastes has improved and that there is a trend towards more separation of domestic wastes. All fractions collected separately (biowastes and recoverables) totalled 25.0 million tonnes or 54% of municipal wastes in 2005. In 2002, the figure was 26.4 million tonnes or 56% of municipal wastes. 7.9 million tonnes of the fractions collected separately in 2005 were paper, cardboard or cardboard packaging.
Growing waste utilisation rates
Reutilisation rate of the main waste flows
Waste management is especially sustainable if the relation between reutilised substances and amount of waste generated (reutilisation rate) is reasonably high or increases markedly over time. For municipal wastes and wastes from production and businesses, a clear trend towards reutilisation has been observed since 2002. An average reutilisation rate of 66% has been achieved for wastes in general, which means that two thirds of every tonne of waste delivered to a German waste disposal facility return in some form or other into the materials cycle. Particularly the construction wastes, who are important in terms of quantity, stand out due to a high reutilisation rate of nearly 90%. For municipal wastes it has become obvious that people have become strongly aware of reutilisation. Over the last 15 years, especially the separate collection of glass, paper, and packaging has led to a substantially higher reutilisation rate from clearly under 10% (in 1990) to 62% for municipal wastes.
Landfilling of waste strongly decreasing
Parallel to the increased reutilisation of waste, the amount of waste landfilled is decreasing. In 2005, about 45.7 million tonnes of wastes were disposed of in 1,948 landfills in Germany. In 2004, the quantity of waste landfilled (56.7 million tonnes) was by 11 million tonnes larger. The decrease by 19% is mainly due to a provision of the waste landfilling ordinance, applicable since June 2005 and stating that biodegradable municipal wastes must no longer be landfilled without treatment. In 2005, 3.9 million tonnes of municipal wastes were landfilled, which is a decrease by 54% on the previous year. For landfilled wastes from waste treatment, the so-called secondary wastes, an above-average decrease (-26%) to 8.2 million tonnes on the previous year was recorded in 2005. Another cause of the decrease in total waste landfilling is probably the low level of construction activity in 2005. Along with the decline in total construction and demolition wastes described above, the quantity of landfilled construction and demolition wastes, which is the largest fraction of substances, was down by 9% to 23.2 million tonnes, too.
Relative importance of waste disposal plants
In return, the lower landfilling rate led to an increase in the waste quantities treated in mechanical-biological and thermal waste treatment facilities to 2.5 (+64%) and 19.5 million tonnes (+6%), respectively. Also, the rise in co-combustion in firing plants to 11.1 million tonnes (+17%) is due to the landfilling prohibition.
Authors:
Dr. Bernd Becker, Hermann Knichel - Federal Statistical Office
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