The Danish waste management strategy

The Danish waste management strategy relies on recycling as the optimum handling of waste. The Danish Board of Technology has set up an inter-sectional working group consisting of individually selected experts charged with analysing this strategy and assessing whether Denmark is utilising the tool of recycling appropriately.
The working group is to endeavour to make a visionary reassessment of recycling, seen in light of the development waste management has undergone since the Danish strategy was set up in the 1980s. Thus, the objective of the Board of Technology project is to assess whether the Danish strategy for waste and recycling appears realistic and to participate in upgrading the basis for decisions on waste-policy activities.

The members of the working group are:

  • John Thøgersen, Ph.D., assistant professor, Institute of Market Economy, Aarhus Business School
  • Lis Husmer, M.Sc., Danish Society for the Conservation of Nature
  • Morten Elle, M.Sc., Ph.D., Institute of Planning, Technical University of Denmark
  • Nete Jakobsen, architect, managing director, Reno-Sam
  • Niels Krogh Lauridsen, M.Sc., environment manager, Rockwool International A/S
  • Suzanne Arup VeltzĂ©, LL.B., president, Danish Waste Management Association (DAKOFA)
  • Vagn Isaksen, M.A., head of technical knowledge center, Rendan A/S
  • Anne Funch Rohmann, M.Sc., project manager, The Danish Board of Technology

 

Recommendations of the working group

Denmark has a well-functioning and efficient waste disposal system. However, the Danish waste management strategy falls short on several points. First of all, Denmark has not succeeded in realising effective preventive measures – witnessed, for instance, in the volumes of waste accumulating year by year. The fixed goals for recycling and other treatment processes were determined by politicians. One significant problem with the current objectives is that they are not based on a holistic view of the area. In an overall environmental and resource assessment it matters whether the recycling concerns demolition waste or aluminium. Within a short period of time – i.e. no more than three years – the Danish waste policy has to change its tack, so that in future a holistic approach is selected and efforts are shaped by thoroughly weighing which choices are optimum for the environment and resources in view of the life cycle of a product – raw materials, production, consumption, recycling, waste treatment.
As a nation, Denmark has limited options for achieving the objects of minimising the environment and resource loads in the waste area, ensuring clean materials for recycling and eliminating environmental and hazardous substances. We cannot set up requirements for the home market which may be construed as technical barriers to trade. However, such arguments should never be used as a pretext for not posing the necessary requirements and working, nationally and internationally, for their adoption.

 

Data basis

The working group believes that the existing data basis in the waste area is insufficient as a political tool for improving preventive activities. The reporting system appears to have been developed many years ago and with more modest aims in mind. The group indicates actual aspects where the existing knowledge on waste production and recycling must be qualitatively expanded before a holistic approach to the environment and to resources can be introduced. The short-term objective must be to develop the waste data basis, to enable its use as an environmental management tool.

 

Organisation

The administrative organisation of the area should also reflect a new course for waste policy, a course headed towards more intense focus on preventive and holistic efforts. The group would like to see an overall organisation that could make assessments of an entire product cycle, from raw materials to disposal, based on considerations of the environment and resources. To this end, institutions must interconnect and coordinate the regulation effected in the product creation phase and the regulation governing product disposal. Therefore, Denmark should consider implementing a restructured and more holistic organisation able to handle all environmental and resource activities. This could be effected in fewer, larger and professionally more solid units, e.g. 10-15 units.

 

Management tools

A holistic approach would lead to changes in the perception of the involved players’ roles and responsibilities. One telling example is that producers’ key role in waste prevention efforts would become more prominent. An altered structure of incentives to companies, importers, retailers and other players remains a prerequisite for implementing efficient waste prevention and for reducing the environmental and resource load of waste treatment. Thus, the responsibility of essential players in Denmark should be expanded. Legislation should lay down the principal responsibility of the producers – and other essential players – for waste and environmental loads which their products cause.

 

Perspectives

In the longer term – a period of ten years – more radical changes in the existing pattern of production and consumption will need to be introduced to ensure a sustainable development. Products of the future need to contain few materials, and their life cycles must be considered thoroughly, right from the idea stage. In the long run, the ideal scenario is to create a society conscious of resource-cycles. The process paving the way to this society requires an understanding that sustainable development demands a new and different approach than a high recycling percentage.