Following the Second World War, along with rising prosperity, the amount and quality of waste also changed>>>

Bulgaria: Disposal of the most dangerous locations with buried pesticides

While there is no doubt that the prevention of municipal solid waste (MSW) generation should sit at the top of any public policy, industrial strategy and individual behaviour, just like reducing the consumption of energy, this proposition might mislead the public into thinking that waste can suddenly disappear if only we had the will to make it happen.

Today, the Meseberg Climate Working Group met in Berlin. It is the second meeting of the Franco-German group, bringing together all ministries dealing with climate change measures under the lead of Climate State Secretaries Brune Poirson (FRA) and Jochen Flasbarth (DEU). The close collaboration across sectors responds to the mandate given by President Macron and Chancellor Merkel in June 2018 at Meseberg.

Together with Mr. Thomas Schwarz (photo), Managing Director of Zweckverband Waste Management Region Hannover (aha) Werner Bauer and Dr. Karoline Borner, WtERT-Germany had the pleasure to visit the impressive photography exhibition "Ctrl-X, A topography of e-waste" of documentary photographer Kai Löffelbein in Hanover.

As a completion of the intensive cooperation of the export initiative Environmental Technologies "Sustainable Waste and Recycling Management in Croatia", a high-ranking 30-member delegation from Croatia visited Bavaria.

Dr. Sunil Kumar, Principal Scientist and Head, Head of WtERT India had a meeting with Dipl.-Ing. Werner Bauer and Dipl.-Ing. Hedwig Vielreicher in Munich, Bavaria.

This annual report summarizes WtERT-Germany's activities, like the outcome of the website's relaunch, our consultancy projects in Croatia and Tunisia as well as hosting/delegation of guests in 2018. In addition, it gives a glimpse of what we are about to do in 2019.

A tunisian delegation came to Munich during 26 ^th- 30 ^th of November 2018. They visited the technical site at municipal utilities, city of Rosenheim, as well as BSA GmbH to take a look at construction waste recycling, bio waste fermentation and recycling of electronic waste. To round off the program, a workshop with contributions from Tunisian and Bavarian experts took place.

Tracer Based Sorting is an innovative approach for waste Management enabling material or product sorting regardless of their physical properties. The technology is based on applying inorganic marker substances in ppm concentrations in or on the objects to be sorted. These substances can later be detected in the recycling process, serving either to remove contaminants or to recover valuable materials from the waste stream. Five German companies along with two universities and one associated networking partner are working on the pilot development of Tracer Based Sorting for plastic packaging recycling in a collaborative research Project.

Emission reduction in power plants.

The EU-Reference Document for emissions control under the European Union‘s Directive 2010/75/EU at Large Combustion Plants (LCP – i.e at coal-fired power plants – was finalized in 2017, establishing Prof. Vosteen‘s Bromine-Enhanced-Mercury-Oxidation (BEMO-technology) as a BAT. In April 2018, the corresponding Waste Incineration BREF has undergone its final revisions by the Technical Working Group, coordinated by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission’s Science and Knowledge Service in Seville; for mercury emissions control at Waste Incineration Plants (WIP) the BEMO-technology was established as a BAT, as well. The following paper will report about applications of the technology at divers WIP in Germany (since 2001) and in France (since 2014). A special issue are mercury emission peaks as caused by unforeseen (sometimes criminal) input of hidden mercury; also this problem can be handled easily, as will be described again below.