Share article
Please fill out all the fields marked with an asterisk * and then click on "Send form".
The state government of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) has launched a new initiative, KlimaExpo.NRW, which is to primarily focus on implementing the ‘energy turnaround’ (i.e. switching from fossil fuels to renewables) and reaching the targets set out to prevent climate change. The goal of the Expo is to make successful, future-oriented projects, which are aimed at protecting our climate, accessible to the public and so present the technological and economic potential of the state of NRW. Moreover, as the Expo project is due to run for eight years, it is also being seen as a kind of think tank and breeding ground for new ideas.
The waste management and recycling sector is also playing an important role in the Klima.Expo, as it has already helped Germany to reach the first sub-goal set out in the Kyoto Protocol: to reduce methane emissions by a factor of 20. What is particularly notable about this sub-goal is that methane is approx. 26 times more harmful to the climate that carbon dioxide. By simply closing landfills to household waste and other types of waste with an organic content of > 5%, emissions of methane – which is produced as the organic material rots – have been able to be reduced by a factor of 20.
Besides the success in this area, the waste management and recycling sector has made a further contribution towards preventing climate change: simply by operating an effective recycling sector, which focuses on generating energy as well as on reducing energy consumption, more greenhouse gases are avoided than produced.
The Lippe Plant will, therefore, soon be opening its doors and gates to the public to enable all those interested to see how the recycling sector works and how it can help to prevent climate change. If the ‘energy turnaround’ is to be achieved quickly and if businesses are to be operated in an energy efficient and environmentally friendly way, then innovative resource-efficient technologies are needed as well as a secure supply of raw materials. This, in turn, requires modern and efficient recycling processes. The Lippe Plant is already home to a wide variety of recycling facilities which enable numerous materials to be recovered and returned to production cycles or to generate climate-neutral energy. By developing new technologies, the company can create new recycling systems and increase the number of materials it is able to recycle. Today, REMONDIS is already able to produce many primary products from the secondary raw materials it has recovered at the Lippe Plant and so substitute large quantities of primary fossil and mineral raw materials. Thanks to its activities, REMONDIS is playing a major role in reducing carbon emissions as well as emissions of many other harmful gases such as methane.