Baltic Waste Management Council Meeting 2011

28 October 2011, Tallinn, Estonia

The aim of the Baltic Waste Management council (BWMC) is to give officials from ministries, environmental protection agencies and other authorities an opportunity to meet and discuss waste-related issues on a Baltic Sea level. We believe that these meetings and discussions will create a stronger platform that will enable future co-operation when it comes to harmonisation of treatment, waste management standards and approaches/technical solutions.

The project will use the BWMC as a reference group when creating the joint strategy. The BWMC meeting is a continuation of the previous RECO project tradition and will take place at least once a year. If you wish to become a member, please contact Åsa Stenmarck, project manager.

This first meeting was opened by a presentation by Mr R. Fiedler, City Cleaning Company (Stadtreinigung Hamburg), Hamburg, Germany who gave a presentation on how Hamburg has worked with sustainable waste management in connection with the city being the European Green Capital 2011. After the presentation a discussion followed on different topics related to finding the most relevant waste management system for each region. Fees, separate collection and regional cooperation were among the topics discussed.

The rest of the meeting was spent on explaining the project process in more detail and discussing the criteria for the information gathered, but also further strategies of the project and different problems that the countries are facing when deciding on how to spend the EU’s structural funds.

After lunch the group went to the new MBT facility run by Ragnsells which recently opened its new MBT facility in Tallinn. The treatment technology is the latest MBT development based on the bio-drying process of mixed municipal waste. This technology allows recovering up to 85% of the waste as a RDF that can be used as a fuel for cement industry or power plants. The facility will process 120,000 tonnes of municipal waste per year, which amounts to nearly a half of the total municipal waste of Estonia. The servicing area of the plant will reach up to 100-150 kilometres from Tallinn. The cost of the plant was 14.7 million Euros.