General Information on Waste

Product responsibility is the focal point of waste management policy in Germany. Through this the conditions for effective and environmentally sound waste avoidance and recovery measures are created already in the production stage. This is the decisive stage to a circular flow economy that contributes to the necessary climate protection and natural ressources management in Germany. The 1996 Closed Substance Cycle and Waste Management Act (KrW-/AbfG) puts this policy into practice. This policy has enabled Germany to establish a modern waste management and significant positive effects on the protection of soil, water bodies and human health.

The highest recovery quotas worldwide also help save raw materials and primary energy in Germany. Almost 60% of municipal wastes and more than 40% of production wastes undergo recovery. For some waste types the recycling quotas are even higher - e.g. construction waste 86%, packaging 81%, batteries 77% and graphic paper about 82%. Today more than 240,000 people work in waste management in Germany - an economic sector with a turnover of about 50 billion Euro. Over the last 15 years the emission of greenhouse gas pollutants from waste management activities was reduced by 30 million tons of CO2 equivalents per year.

By strictly separating wastes, through pretreatment, recycling and the recovery of energy, Germany aims to make full use of substances and materials bound in wastes and therefore to make landfilling of many wastes more or less superfluous. North-Rhine Westphalia is one of the biggest and most populated States of the Federal Republic of Germany. It bears 22% of the German population and produces some 25% of German waste. North-Rhine Westphalia takes the responsibility for developing such a closed-loop economy.

This English website of Waste management activities of the State Agency of Environment North-Rhine Westphalia follows the structure of the presentation in German. You will find English summaries and examples of our work within all chapters that follow. Main focus is to present to our foreign guests the methodological base, the main data resulting and some short cuts of our reports.

On this leading web side you will find links to the Waste Balance [and 1 figure] of North Rhine-Westphalia, derived from investigations on the complete recycling and disposal infrastructure, published in the Disposal Atlas NRW [and figure 2 and figure 3].

For more details, see SARDINIA 2003-1 and SARDINIA 2003-2.

Recently, the complete waste management data were integrated into the waste data turntable AIDA which was published under the following adress in October 2003: www.nrw-luawebapps.de

For more details please refer to AIDA.