Abfallwirtschaft zwischen Entsorgungsnotstand und Überkapazitäten

The present situation in the utilization of waste products is characterized by the required achievement of rigorous environmental standards (pre-treatment of waste, sealing of dumps) and the decrease in the disposal of waste, as a result of the latter, an excess capacity of municipal waste disposal facilities. The requirements concerning the (thermal or mechanical-biological) pre-treatment of waste according to current regulations will not be met on time. So from 2005 onwards a bottleneck in waste disposal facilities has to be expected. It is the objective of achieving uniform standards of refuse disposal to control the disposal of waste by the way of meeting environmental standards to heighten the reliability of corporate planning but not - like at present - by means of different prices of refusing dispose. In order to explain the fundamental change from the “battle about waste” between privately owned enterprises and municipalities to a future “state of emergency regarding refuse disposal” the waste industry will be briefly characterized in the context of environmental protection (2.) Then its legal framework will be described and partly commented on (3.). Here the basic problem lies in the distinction between waste utilization and refuse disposal, which is in dispute especially in case of waste incineration. The actual legal practice has resulted in a waste utilization friendly interpretation of the concept of waste, with the consequence of a low level of capacity utilization of municipal incinerating plants. The object of chapter 4 is the pricing of the different services of waste disposal in the form of the calculation of fees and their possible ecological design. Especially in the period from 1990 to 2000 charges of waste disposal had risen drastically. As an alternative solution of regulating the utilization of waste products in form of the current juxtaposition of public and private refuse disposal and waste utilization its further liberalization (de-regulation, privatization) is controversially dealt with. A few variants from these will be distinguished in more detail (competition in and for the market, increase of efficiency in the current legal and organizational framework).