M. Bruno Oberle

Interview with Mr. Bruno OBERLE, head of the Federal Environment Office, Switzerland

In your opinion, what are the main challenges currently facing waste policies: in Europe, and/or in your own country?

I believe that one of the major challenges is the way tasks are shared out between the private economy and the State. Indeed, the extremely steep rise in the cost of raw materials has put the waste economy in total disarray. Waste treatment plants are currently making a profit on the sales of certain fractions and this profit partly finances the disposal of those fractions that cannot be recycled. However, if raw material prices continue to rise, it is possible that recyclable flows might be extracted even before reaching processing plants. Consequently, in the medium term, we might witness an increasing privatisation of the profitable aspect of waste management, the unprofitable side being left to the State. This distribution of roles may not necessarily be a bad thing but it would mean that we would have to undertake an in-depth review of the way in which the waste disposal infrastructure is funded. The fact that the line between what is and what is not profitable tends to fluctuate introduces an additional problem. Therefore, the challenge lies in devising a waste management policy that is robust, especially with regard to major raw material price changes. The problem is further complicated by the trend involving the opening up of frontiers, an approach that also extends to waste.

The recent changes in raw material prices have also highlighted a powerful trend that has been developing over some years now, a trend that turns waste into a resource. Previously, the aim had been to make waste disappear more or less elegantly. Our laws and regulations go back to the end of the 1980’s and were devised with that aim in mind. Now, the opposite applies: waste is a resource that has to be recycled as thoroughly as possible. The fact that there are now contractors who specialise in extracting scrap metal from old landfill sites clearly illustrates this change in practices: from final disposal at an «ultimate storage site», we moved on to the opencast mine. In my view, this perception of waste as a resource will constitute the central issue in future waste policies.

Additionally, I am convinced that reducing greenhouse effect gases has to be one of the waste management policy priorities. Thus, by banning the disposal of combustible waste at landfill sites, Switzerland has drastically cut the amount of methane released from its landfill sites. Furthermore, this combustible waste replaces fossil fuels, creating a further reduction in emissions. Finally, the re-use of biological waste to produce energy holds another important option for improvement, particularly with regard to the production of biogenous fuels, an option that we must exploit.

On a national level, cleaning up contaminated sites is a major stake whether we are talking about old landfill sites devoted to special waste or abandoned industrial sites. These clean-up operations produce very large quantities of waste on the same scale as in Switzerland. Optimizing the treatment of large quantities of materials that can sometimes be highly contaminated is a challenge that we have to take up.

How urgent do you regard the issues of preventing waste output on the one hand and recycling waste on the other, issues that are now at the heart of current changes to European regulations (Themed strategy and draft Framework Directive)?

Waste output prevention is a matter of prime importance in terms of both product design and of the consumer. Only constituting a small market, Switzerland has little influence as far as products are concerned but fully cooperates with EU efforts in this field. Indeed, the design and production of mass consumption products are far optimum with regards to both recycling options and to their ultimate disposal. As far as the end consumer is concerned, the Swiss policy is closely based on the «consumer pays» approach and can claim a degree of success. In fact, more than 50% of household waste is recycled and this figure is close to 80% for aluminium and paper. However, there is very little room for improvement as far as the recycling level is concerned and, once again, this highlights the importance of taking action at the root of the problem, when designing products that are to be released on the market. In this context, the EU’s chemicals policy is a very important tool.

Conversely, I believe that the concept of technical obstacles facing the business as construed within the context of the WTO is also a technical obstacle to innovation. Indeed, it has been shown that stringent environmental standards constitute a wonderful stimulus for innovation. But this stimulus will only work if the innovating company can hope to reap the fruits of its endeavours, for instance by enjoying a degree of protection from the competition created by foreign products of ecologically inferior quality. Consequently, I fear that the WTO could apply the lowest common denominator in the field of consumer product ecological concepts.

What is your assessment of the stakes associated with the social acceptability of waste and its treatment plants: how do we inform the population and how to we involve them?

In Switzerland as elsewhere, the construction of a waste treatment plant always meets with opposition. Incinerators are far from being comprehensively accepted but I believe that their acceptance is still noticeably better than in many other European countries. At this point, I would like to say a few words on my analysis of this unusual feature.

Since the mid 1980’s, incinerators have been governed by stringent emission standards and these standards are subject to major control by public powers. This credible and, above all, independent control is essential if we are to win the trust of the population. Clearly, technical measures used to reduce and control emissions come at a high cost but the trust-capital they create produces an important return on investment for the public authority. Indeed, clean plants are tolerated close to or even in urban centres, thus reducing transport costs for waste to be incinerated on the one hand and, on the other, allowing the thermal energy released by incineration to be put to valuable use such as remote heating networks.

In Switzerland, incinerators are owned by public authorities. In my view, this also plays an important part in ensuring that these plants are accepted. I believe that incinerators that are in public hands enjoy the citizen’s trust in the State. Obviously, this trust has to be earned and sustained not only through the controls referred to above but also by a credible recycling policy where incineration is not the easy option but a pragmatic technical solution to the problem of eliminating combustible waste that cannot be recycled.