Last changed: 21/12/2005
On 25 August 2001, the “Ordinance on the limitation of of VOC emissions due to the use of organic solvents in certain installations – 31st BlmSchV - went into effect in Germany.
This 31st BImSchV, which is also referred to as the “Solvents Ordinance”, serves to transpose the corresponding EU Directive 1999/13/EC into German law and for the most part adopts the approach taken by the Directive.
The Solvents Ordinance defines requirements for 19 different areas of activity and is mainly aimed at installation operators. The process of implementing the Ordinance has clearly shown that all stakeholders, i.e. installation operators, competent authorities, and installation suppliers, require a lot of information to comply with the Ordinance.
A variety of small installations that are not subject to authorisation fall within the scope of the Ordinance, which for the first time requires the operators of these installations to submit reports to the competent authority in the form of annual solvent management plans and, where applicable, reduction schemes. Solvent management plans and reduction schemes are completely new mechanisms in immission control legislation. However, the information that operators and the competent authorities need in order to comply with the Ordinance is often lacking in whole or in part, or the available data is extremely inaccurate?, and above all there is an information gap in regard to the application modalities for these new mechanisms. Therefore, an “Implementation Guide for the German Solvents Ordinance” has been developed to address the sometimes highly complex issues faced by both operators and the competent authorities in elaborating solvent management plans and reduction schemes and to help to optimise compliance with the Ordinance.
Report "Implementation
guide for the German Solvent Ordinance (31.BImSchV)"
Ordinance regarding the reduction of VOC emissions resulting from
the use of organic solvents in specific installations 31st. BImSchV