(best examples and good practices) on household organic waste ...

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7. Germany
7.1. Waste management situation
The German strategy
Germany focuses on three ways of waste management: separate collection <strong>and</strong> recycling of secondary
raw materials (paper <strong>and</strong> biowaste), pre-treatment of mixed household waste in mechanical-biological
treatment plants <strong>and</strong> dedicated incineration with energy recovery of mixed household waste.
A ban on l<strong>and</strong>filling waste with an organic content of more than 3 % was adopted already in 1993 but
due to several problems it was not implemented properly. The difficulties encountered, were dealt with
the Waste L<strong>and</strong>filling Ordinance (2001), which re-established a deadline of 1 June 2005 for
implementing the l<strong>and</strong>fill ban. Special limit values for the organic content of waste that has undergone
mechanical-biological treatment were introduced. Since the deadline, the amount of municipal waste
l<strong>and</strong>filled has fallen to 1 %.
In Germany each federal state has its own targets in waste management. Some states try to minimize
the negative impacts of the biodegradable fraction by treating it separately. Others incinerate their
waste for energy production,etc. (EEA Report No 7/.,2009)
In the mid-1960s the national government <strong>and</strong> the federal states started to
analyze waste disposal <strong>and</strong> disseminated the findings to municipalities, which
were responsible for disposing of municipal waste. Due to a substantial increase
in industrial production <strong>and</strong> private consumption, waste generation grew
rapidly at the beginning of the 1970s. At that time, waste was primarily
disposed of in 50 000 small dumpsites <strong>and</strong> interest concentrated on them <strong>and</strong>
the need to build appropriate waste management facilities. (EEA Report No
7/.,2009)
Germany is one of the first countries which adopted the diversion of waste for
l<strong>and</strong>filling in the early 90s. Measures included schemes for collecting packaging
waste, biowaste <strong>and</strong> waste paper separately. As a result, by 1995 Germany