World Congress of the International Solid Waste Management Association

Toespraak | 24-09-2007

Ladies and gentlemen,

I would like to begin by welcoming you all to the 2007 World Congress of the International Solid Waste Management Association. It is an honour to have this international group of experts here in the Netherlands.

You may be interested to know that the Dutch Solid Waste Association is celebrating its' one hundredth anniversary! This shows just how far back in history waste policy goes. I would like to congratulate the Dutch Solid Waste Association on its' centenary. And I wish you a long, bright future. We will always need a well-organised professional association of companies, institutions and public authorities engaged in waste management. Strong representatives from the waste sector are a real boon for the government. They are a source of knowledge, function as intermediaries and inspire renewal in the sector. And the Dutch Solid Waste Association is passionate about its' role! And of course, for many years now, there have been similar organisations in other countries. And that is a good thing, because waste doesn't respect national borders.

So the organisation is one hundred years old. As in other countries, the Dutch association was established by the municipal sanitation departments, many of which have been around for a very long time. I'll give you a brief overview of our national waste management history. In Amsterdam, the first public municipal waste bins were installed in 1475. The city set up a municipal sanitation department in 1877 and opened an incinerator in 1918. It wasnt the first in the Netherlands, however. Energy generated by burning waste was already being produced in those days. Tests were carried out in Amsterdam as early as 1902. It took a while to get a waste incineration plant up and running, but even back then people realised that we could make use of the energy that waste contains.

Our first priority is to avoid producing waste in the first place. Prevention is and will remain our motto. As a rule, recycling is a much more eco-efficient option than disposal. And your sector has a vitally important role to play. I believe that a lot of innovation will be needed to take recycling technologies to a higher level. Market effects such as clear demand for recycled products and materials will be central here. In order to stimulate demand, these products must be economically competitive, and they should be designed for recycling from the outset.

I strongly believe in taking an integrated approach that covers the entire product chain. Extracting raw materials, product demand and waste processing are all links in the same chain. Shifting the emphasis in our thinking towards the life cycle of a product can help reduce environmental impact. Taking a more efficient and comprehensive approach to the life cycle from raw material to product to waste and avoiding problem-shifting in the chain reduces pressure on the environment.

The Dutch government is committed to increasing market demand. To help achieve this goal, its procurement practice aims to be 100% sustainable by 2010. We are implementing this policy for some 80 product groups, including secondary raw materials, building materials and fuel. Our efforts will be directed primarily at prevention and closed cycle or zero discharge recycling. And waste that is not yet recyclable should be processed for energy. This is very important, because climate change is one of the worlds most pressing problems.

Ladies and gentlemen,
It should be clear that climate policy and greenhouse gas reduction are very important to Europe and the Dutch government. This spring, the European Council adopted ambitious goals for the EU. In the Netherlands, climate policy is one of the pillars of the governments coalition agreement. Tackling the climate problem is one of the key global challenges of our time. A challenge that demands national, European and global policy, as well as intensive international cooperation.

Last week I presented the work programme entitled Clean and Green: New Energy for the Climate. It is mainly concerned with preventing and mitigating climate problems in the Netherlands.

What are our key objectives?

• to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2020 compared to 1990;
• to obtain 20% of our energy from renewable sources by 2020;
• to reduce our energy consumption by 2% a year.

These targets buck the trend. We will probably meet the Kyoto objectives for reducing greenhouse gases by 2010 quite easily. But we really need to raise the bar going forward to 2020. And that is what the Clean and Green programme aims to do. We will use a combination of policy instruments to achieve our goals:

• progressively higher standards;
• a greener tax system;
• programmes that stimulate innovation;
• temporary incentive schemes to accelerate the introduction of sustainable innovations. One such programme is the new Renewable Energy Incentive Scheme, which will be adopted soon;
• lower emissions ceilings and more trading in greenhouse gas emissions to stimulate the market; and
• more robust climate and energy diplomacy. You know better than anyone that European policy is crucial to achieving national goals. Half of national emissions are covered by European emissions trading. Another way that Europe can help is by setting efficiency standards for appliances and cars.

The goals we want to achieve for each sector are set out in the plan. In the coming months I will be making agreements with the sectors about ways of achieving these goals. I will also be introducing a sustainability agreement between public authorities and the business community as a whole. So a lot is happening, but we need to step up the momentum.

I am convinced that the waste sector and waste management have a valuable contribution to make in our nations transition to renewable energy.

I can tell you that we are well on our way. For example, methane emissions from waste disposal sites are being reduced and the energy generated by waste incineration plants is being used to produce heat and electricity more frequently. So we have waste to energy from:

• electricity and heat production in incineration plants;
• fermentation and composting plants;
• biomass plants;
• methane from landfills; and
• waste co-incineration at power plants and in the cement industry.

We are maximising our use of the energy content of non-recyclable waste in a variety of ways. But there are many other ways to make better use of the potential that waste has. I am talking about this with your sector. There are major opportunities for medium-term growth in utilising the residual heat produced by incineration. Constructing heat networks in several regions of the country is one of the priorities in the Clean & Green programme.

In the longer term, we can shift the focus and use less waste as fuel and more waste as raw materials and building materials for new products. This entails taking even greater steps in our chain policy.

Right now in Dutch waste policy we are actively moving from a sector-based approach to a full-chain approach. The sector-based approach focuses on the end of product chains: the waste stage. This policy has been highly successful: today, only a small portion of Dutch waste is dumped in landfills. More than 80% is put to good use. And the volume of waste per household stopped growing some time ago. It is important to maintain past successes as we move forward.

But by formulating new policy goals based on a full-chain approach, we can achieve even greater results: we can reduce environmental impact and stop the practice of problem-shifting . To do this we need to implement measures to:

• ensure that waste flows are easier to recycle;
• ensure that reused products are not made of less environmentally sound materials and do not require more energy to produce;
• introduce sustainability practices at the beginning of the product chain. For example, we could avoid generating waste or reduce the volume of waste by designing products differently.

The full-chain approach has the potential to generate huge benefits for the environment. The new Dutch National Waste Management Plan will focus on this approach and the energy gains from waste.

The concept of production-chain policy and life-cycle thinking is by no means new. It has a long tradition in the Netherlands. The first National Environmental Policy Plan back in 1989 addressed the concept of comprehensive full-chain thinking. With that in mind, I imagine that the inspiring cradle-to-cradle concept of our next speaker, Michael Braungart, will fall on fertile ground here. In those days, the full-chain approach attracted attention among environment experts, but not among the general public. But that needs to change now. It is time to generate broad public support. And I want to do my part. A television programme about the cradle-to-cradle concept generated a torrent of positive energy and mobilised people in the Netherlands. We have made a start! And I am eager to play my part in building public support and contributing to concrete initiatives.

A whole range of initiatives are already under way. Companies are interested in C2C. Conferences are being organised. The C2C concept could be the long-term solution to our energy and environment problems. And it fits with our transition to truly sustainable energy management, production and consumption and our vision of future waste policy. There's no such thing as waste!

Like I said earlier, as Minister of the Environment I have to take steps now to remedy our energy and environment problems in the short term. I would like to invite Michael Braungart to outline what he believes government and business can and should do to bring his vision of a cradle-to-cradle world closer to fruition.

Ladies and gentlemen,

In closing, you will understand that I cannot create effective and innovative waste policy on my own. Nor would I wish to. I need your help manufacturers and waste processors. You have valuable experience, practical knowledge and innovative ideas. I want to work with you to shape this inspiring and innovative waste policy. Because we have to face the challenges of the future together!

And finally, I hope that by the next anniversary of the Dutch Solid Waste Association in five years time we can say that we have taken great strides towards a cleaner future nationally and internationally!

Thank you