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Germans Have a Burning Need for More Garbage

Lack of garbage forces power plants to import waste; ‘straw into gold’

Trash delivered from dump trucks is loaded into storage at an MHKW Rothensee waste-to-energy power plant in Germany. The nation recycles so much that some plants have to import garbage. ENLARGE
Trash delivered from dump trucks is loaded into storage at an MHKW Rothensee waste-to-energy power plant in Germany. The nation recycles so much that some plants have to import garbage. Photo: Eliot Brown/The Wall Street Journal

MAGDEBURG, Germany—Each day, trucks roll into this city filled with the latest hot import from the streets of Manchester, England: garbage.

The destination is a power plant that makes a business of turning trash into electricity, or as it touts in a brochure, “spinning straw into gold.” The straw in this case is large, pillowy blobs of rubbish, neatly wrapped in plastic.

Recycling and trash bins ENLARGE
Recycling and trash bins

“Like a marshmallow,” beams Rolf Oesterhoff, manager of the MHKW Rothensee waste-to-energy plant.

A waste not, want not attitude mixed with a national zeal for recycling has led to an awkward problem for Germany: It isn’t producing enough of its own trash.

Over the past decade, heaps of garbage-burning power plants and composting facilities were built throughout Germany as the country shut off all its landfills to new household trash. But instead of growing, as many thought it would, household-waste production flattened, in part because sparing Germans edged their already-high recycling rate even higher.

Taken with the effects of a declining population and the global recession, plants in Germany were left short millions of tons of garbage a year, a quandary for companies that depend on a steady stream of rubbish to keep the lights on.

So the country turned to its trashier neighbors.

Now by boat and by truck, waste is piling in from England, Ireland, Italy and Switzerland, among others, to plants, where it gets burned and converted to electricity that keeps German households on the grid.

In Magdeburg, about 100 miles from Berlin, the trash is converted to electricity for one-third of the city, and heating for roughly 50,000 homes.

The imports are made possible by a European Union directive to gradually phase out landfills. That has led to higher taxes on landfill use in countries like Great Britain, making the trans-border shipping economically feasible.

An MHKW Rothensee waste-to-energy power plant converts trash into electricity and heating for citizens of Magdeburg, Germany. ENLARGE
An MHKW Rothensee waste-to-energy power plant converts trash into electricity and heating for citizens of Magdeburg, Germany. Photo: Eliot Brown / The Wall Street Journal

Yet while the Netherlands and Sweden have made a business out of importing and processing their neighbors’ waste, rising rubbish imports are causing a backlash in Germany, where recycling and generally reducing waste is something of a national obsession.

The reverence of reduction dates back decades. In 1991, Germany passed a sweeping law that institutionalized recycling, one that helped inspire movements in other countries including the U.S., where about 34% of waste is now recycled.

Today, the recycling rate here counts among the highest in the world, by some measures, at roughly 65% of household trash. Within houses and apartments, kitchen waste bins can have four or more compartments for sorting various categories of recycling.

Further down the rubbish chain, communal containers in the courtyards or basements of apartment buildings span almost the full rainbow spectrum: In Berlin, there are different-colored bins for clear, brown and green glass, yellow bins for some plastic—but not all—brown bins for organic refuse, blue ones for paper and cardboard—but not all—and black or gray bins for everything else.

“We are a German generation that grew up with recycling,” said Stefan Korn, a 30-year-old Berlin resident. Mr. Korn is a founder of the boutique Upcycling Deluxe GmbH, one of a half dozen of so-called “upcycling” stores in Berlin. They take old clothing and other refuse and reconstitute it as chic handicrafts and apparel—at a less-than-trashy price.

Among its offerings: caps made from burlap coffee bean sacks ($44), lamps crafted from tea cups ($67 to $78) and car air bags reborn as laptop cases ($67).

Even at the Magdeburg power plant, recycling is a big deal. When the boilers are cleaned, metal from the coals is picked out with magnets, while the remaining ash is sold to an asphalt company, being reborn in the form of German roads.

So when it comes to importing trash, this culture of refuse reduction makes some Germans wary of cleaning up the rest of Europe’s mess.

First, there is the issue of odor.

When Irish garbage piled up, lying unmoved for weeks, near a pier in the midsize port city of Bremerhaven in northern Germany last year, the light smell turned to a wafting stench, and residents grew queasy.

“It was a terrible time…it smelled so awful,” said Karlheinz Michen, a member of the Bremerhaven city council. “There were so many flies in the area.”

Politicians intervened, and the trash moved on to its final destination of Hamburg.

Hamburg used to favor importing waste, and the city had a small contract with an English city to take care of its trash. But Hamburg city officials—feeling embarrassed about their relatively low recycling rate of about 40%—made a big push to improve it. That meant less trash, which meant shutting down one waste-to-energy plant, leaving less free capacity.

Closures like those in Hamburg are happening around the country for older and inefficient plants—welcome news for plants that can go on to charge higher prices to municipalities to dispose of their trash.

“We are definitely in a good mood,” said Peter Werz, spokesman for EEW Energy from Waste, which owns the Magdeburg plant.

The mood is a shift from three to four years ago, when the German price for waste was far lower—around $35 per ton compared with $55 to $80 per ton today, according to Tolvik Consulting.

Ultimately, such capacity reductions and rising waste prices may make it uneconomical for neighboring countries to ship their trash to Germany. But with declining trash production at home and other EU countries still phasing out landfills, the Magdeburg plant remains open, provided it has the space, to future imports of others’ waste.

“Not their waste,” corrects Mr. Werz. “Their energy.”

Write to Eliot Brown at eliot.brown@wsj.com

48 comments
Neil Barabas
Neil Barabas subscriber

Like trash burning is not putting a huge amount of CO2 into the atmosphere?    Personally I don't care, but shouldn't that be anathema to those global warmy-changy nuts??

John Williams
John Williams subscriber

Recycling is a waste of time. Garbage companies recycle  your metal cans whether you do it or not. They have conveyer belts and garbage "pickers " that locate metal from your waste.

Dan Coronado
Dan Coronado subscriber

Dum.  Recylcling does not pay the way it is currently managed by my HOA.  Seperate pick up, seperate trucks, seperate sort facilities, very little understanding about how we are supposed to prepare the bins.....it is a joke.  An expensive joke, with the HOA adding to our already high $2500 a year fees.

David Ecale
David Ecale user

@Dan Coronado  I was VP of a HOA some years ago. When the annual contract for trash came up for renewal, I balked at the Recycling charge. I was informed that I could waive the charge & just use trash pickup, but it would RAISE THE TOTAL ANNUAL TRASH FEE BY 25%!

Craig Currie
Craig Currie subscriber

The Germans are burning more dirty coal than ever because of their idiotic plan to shut down all nukes. I am sure we will see a spike in cancer and respiratory diseases because of this as well as the garbage burning. 

Paul Norwood
Paul Norwood subscriber

Terrible article,

I would like to know what are the trade-offs. ?How is the pollution from the plant handled? What happens to the metals that are burned? How much energy is burned to get the trash to the trash burning site? What is in the trash?  Are there air scrubbers? Why don't they burn all Germany's trash? No detail, just superficial article?

DAVID OH
DAVID OH subscriber

@Paul Norwood


Very much agree, they could've provided more detail about how profitable this has been with and without taxpayer subsidies + stats re: emissions and if it's a sustainable solution for other countries to follow, such as China and the US

Roger Brown
Roger Brown subscriber

Burning garbage a highly controversial subject due to emissions.

Containing sun temperature heat plasma plants is also a problem.

Plasma gasification was marketed as a garbage disposal method circa 2010.

None completed and operational USA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification_commercialization

St Lucie, Fl. the last big project cancelled.

The article doesn't state how the Magdeburg plant manages emissions.


Frederick McOmber
Frederick McOmber subscriber

My community in metro Atlanta is currently dual stream (plastic, glass, metal, Styrofoam in one, paper, cardboard in another) and is going to single stream - easy for me and has cut my garbage by about 75%. All gets collected the same day. Has saved the county $$ so works for all involved. No longer talking about blowing through landfill space. Doubt however with EPA regs and low price of natural gas that trash to energy could compete without subsidy which we pay for anyway in the form of higher taxes.  We're going to pay one way or another.

Alonzo Quijana
Alonzo Quijana subscriber

I've stopped recycling.  Too much time and energy for too little gain. 

David Ecale
David Ecale user

@Alonzo Quijana  Wrong approach! Recycling empties the trash can for other items: old carpet, construction waste, chopped up old couches, & etc.

PETER FOLEY
PETER FOLEY user

@David Ecale @Alonzo Quijana Eco-Nuttery steals one's time as well as one's money.


Time that no one can ever recapture in the now forever poorer universe of fetish recycling.


Picking peanuts out of one's waste won't provide tomorrow's lunch, or is it "sustainable" behavior by rational actors.


The EU's environmental Reg's are a forest of stupidity and tree-hugging magical thinking.

Dr. Tar and Professor Feather have taken over the sanitarium.  

Alexander Gutfraynd
Alexander Gutfraynd subscriber

It is a national craze to recycle there. I have a friend who lives in Germany and I was stunned to see the ritual of recycling. Separating dark bottles from light ones. Washing empty yogurt cups before putting them in the recycle bag (I guess wasting water is OK there), etc. His kitchen had 5 recycle bags. It will never work in US. But the meticulous German population executes this craft flawlessly and is proud of it. Of course, almost nothing is left for the trash bin. For me, it is too much.

Michael Mellinger
Michael Mellinger subscriber

@PETER FOLEY Europe's largest economy, the fourth largest in the world, is in the poorhouse?  Please stop.  The US an $!8.5 trillion dollar debt and we don't recycle pennies like the Europeans.  


You're next comment should blame Obama for the debt.

sandro f bayer
sandro f bayer subscriber

@Alexander Gutfraynd Completely correct. My 85 year old aunt lunged at me with a loud scream when i obliviously put a banana peel in the trash. And that was Germany in the 90s!

Michael Mellinger
Michael Mellinger subscriber

@Alexander Gutfraynd why are you wasting water? It's the part of the process that you see.

I guess since you don't see all the resources and effort required to acquire the natural resource then make the plastic in the first place, so in your mind it's less effort. You don't think a lot more water is used in that process?

Yes, Americans are dumb and lazy. That's why we become #2 in the 21st century.

Eric Nelson
Eric Nelson user

@Michael Mellinger @Eric Nelson Oh I'm sure it works but you're paying for it.


It would be more efficient to burn the paper and the plastic. Recycling them and then importing garbage to burn is just a slight bit insane.

Michael Mellinger
Michael Mellinger subscriber

@Eric Nelson Burning plastic is toxic, right?  If you don't understand that much, perhaps you should refrain from commenting anywhere on the Internet?

Michael Mellinger
Michael Mellinger subscriber

@Eric Nelson Scrubbers?  Isn't that what they put on those electric coal plants that make them too expensive to operate?  Clean coal was the future for a few years.  Hasn't really worked out, has it.


I image that getting 100% of the toxins out of the air is pretty expensive, if it's even possible.

PETER FOLEY
PETER FOLEY user

@Michael Mellinger @PETER FOLEY Why do Germans fail to have enough children to replace the previous generation if it isn't crushing taxes and payroll assessments?  Just as The USA middle classes are being crushed under huge taxes and mandates.


Each 2 MegaWatt windmill destroyed over 1.5 million dollars in federal taxes and steals around 400 $ an hour in overcharges for "green" electricity when it operates...


If you aren't wealthier when you are done recycling, it was stupid economically and environmentally.....  Entropy increases.... Get over it.

Michael Mellinger
Michael Mellinger subscriber

@Eric Nelson @PETER FOLEY First, that was your grandpap, who grew up in the Great Depression.  Second, we gave them the money to rebuild, we didn't rebuild it.  That's when General Motors built half the cars in the world and America was #1. 


Three quarters of a century ago...


The world is a different place now.  

ESTELLE BRENNAN
ESTELLE BRENNAN subscriber

@Michael Mellinger @Eric Nelson  It is technologically feasible to make electricity from coal with no pollution.  That is why the EPA had to get carbon dioxide reclassified as a pollutant. 

Eric Nelson
Eric Nelson user

@Michael Mellinger @Eric Nelson Plastic is derived from Natural gas or oil.  They not only can be used for fuel but are being used for fuel to produce electricity.


Ever heard of emissions scrubbers Einstein?


You should check your arrogance at the border.

PETER FOLEY
PETER FOLEY user

@Michael Mellinger Silly man, spending a dime to recycle pennies is one reason Germany is in the poorhouse.


Think of all the millions of man hours consumed in fire of Eco-vanities every year in Germany alone.   The Barbarians that replace today's Germans won't give a fig about any type of conservation-Check out anywhere Islam reigns.

Mark Morrow
Mark Morrow subscriber

From what I hear and see, the relocation camps filled with Middle Eastern immigrants are all trashed out.  Just let Europe have more of these "settlements" within their borders and the Germany's problem will be easily solved!

Milton Scritsmier
Milton Scritsmier subscriber

By burning plastic and other trash made from petroleum products, Germany is liberating all that carbon (mostly in the form of CO2) into the atmosphere when it would have stayed locked up in a landfill. 

Environmentalists are always complaining about how plastics never degrade in a landfill; they never look at it as carbon sequestration.


David Ecale
David Ecale user

@James Evans @Milton Scritsmier  There's another tradeoff. In Minneapolis, the "trash to power" plant lets off a large amount of steam/mist during combustion. In winter, this settles on one of the major highways near the plant, turning it into a skating rink for those 6,000lb commuter controlled power bobsleds. The usual result is the highway version of a demolition derby!

Michael Mellinger
Michael Mellinger subscriber

@Milton Scritsmier Where does it say that they are burning a lot of plastic? They are recycling everything they can, that's why they have a problem.

Milton Scritsmier
Milton Scritsmier subscriber

@Michael Mellinger I've worked in the trash industry, and it's next to impossible to have sorted streams of trash. People don't put their trash in the right recycling bin, especially with plastics. And some plastics simply aren't recyclable on an economical basis. While they probably have human sorters who pick through the trash to keep out the big pieces, it costs money and they can't get it all.

Remember the story said they have to go through the ashes to get the metal. Nobody wants to try to burn metal, but they simply can't keep it all out.

James Evans
James Evans subscriber

@Milton Scritsmier You mean there are trade offs to be made when considering energy sources and the environment!?  How very un-dogmatic!

David Ecale
David Ecale user

@Clint Tarkoe @David Ecale @James Evans @Milton Scritsmier  They're trying in Minneapolis. However, the ridership on the multi-billion dollar light rail systems is way below projections (and revenue). It's a humongous cash sinkhole. OTOH, it's been a boon for the muggers. Unattended automatic trains and isolated stations. 

William Braun
William Braun subscriber

Shipping in waste from the UK is good business. They produce mountains of it and leave it scattered throughout their cities. Ugh.

glenn higa
glenn higa user

Just pipe in more Russian gas!!!

IAN GREGORY
IAN GREGORY subscriber

Germany is phasing out nuclear power, what could go wrong.

PETER FOLEY
PETER FOLEY user

@Michael Mellinger So, what about the dark windless nights = grandma freezing  in the Eco-world order?  Just 100% of the time?

Roger Brown
Roger Brown subscriber

@Michael Mellinger 

Up to 2011 the nuclear contribution was 25 percent.

Shutdown nuclear and build three lignite power plants.  Lignite inferior to coal.

Homeowner rate increased to 36 cents per kWh USD to pay for renewables.

Homeowners have said enough and increased renewable costs to be passed on to the commercial sector.

The German economy depends on export of goods.  Additional costs and shutdown of nuclear will increase costs.  Translate into fewer jobs.

What is the difference between dispatchable and nondispachable power sources?

IAN GREGORY
IAN GREGORY subscriber

@Michael Mellinger I knew that when I posted my comment which I still stand by. I'm all for solar power without government subsidy but hate all those windmills.

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