Statement on the discussion draft

The German Waste Wood Ordinance is to be amended by mid 2021. The BAV e.V. is intensively involved in the amendment process as the voice of the German waste wood industry.

On 29.05.2020, BAV e.V. submitted its statement on the discussion draft to the Federal Environment Ministry. The Waste Wood Association views the high practical relevance of the first draft regulation as very positive. We welcome the retention of the four categories of waste wood, as they ensure high-quality processing and recycling of waste wood. We also believe that the improved and supplemented rule presumption will make a decisive contribution to further increasing the sorting quality.

There has been much discussion in recent months as to how a regulation giving priority to material recycling over energy recovery according to the five-level waste hierarchy of the Closed Substance Cycle Waste Management Act could look like. The formulated proposal to regulate priority for A I with a quota and to maintain equal priority for the remaining categories is a good way of implementation which we support. The material quotas are certainly ambitious, but they must also be technically possible or economically reasonable in individual cases.

Sampling during the process is described in the draft, but in our view there is no provision here that would allow batch management to be abolished at the same time. This should be able to be omitted if compliance with the limit values is confirmed by at least 10 consecutive analytical values. The discontinuation of batch management is particularly important for reprocessing companies whose storage areas are limited. A material recycling of waste wood is otherwise made considerably more difficult for these companies.

The new regulations on sampling, analysis and statistical evaluation procedures may only be introduced under the condition that it is scientifically proven that the proposed procedures for sampling, analysis and statistical evaluation procedures are suitable to ensure a higher degree of quality assurance of sampling and analysis than the regulations of the currently valid Waste Wood Ordinance. The fulfilment of the high quality requirement must also be ensured in future, in particular that no accumulation of pollutants occurs in the material cycle (§ 7 III KrWG). In the view of the FOT, this has not yet been conclusively proven.

In order to ensure high-quality material and energy recovery, it must also be possible in future to combine different types of waste wood of different categories in the production of secondary raw materials in compliance with the legal requirements for subsequent high-quality recovery.

The detailed statement is available here in German.