Climate Protection Potential in the Waste Management Sector

By ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, Germany undertook to make annual reports to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) about Germany’s emissions of greenhouse gases. This is done in the National Inventory Report (NIR), which under the Common Reporting Format (CRF) is required to observe a specific organisation. This means that waste management aspects are only to be found in the “Waste” sector. However, this sector includes only those greenhouse gas emissions which are associated with landfill, biological treatment (including biological treatment in M(B) plants), and incineration without energy generation. By contrast, the benefits of waste recovery as material or energy are integrated in other sectors (“Energy”, “Industrial Process”).