The morning programme began with a welcome from Walter Frauenknecht who also introduced the speakers. He explained that Switzerland as a Non-EU member has her own way of car recycling and has good reasons for it. The presentations would give an idea of the Swiss solution for car recycling.
The first presentation was given by Mr. Daniel Christen from Foundation Auto Recycling Switzerland. Last year 4.2 million vehicles were on the Swiss road. 226,600 Were taken off the road, 96,500 were exported and 120,000 were dismantled. After dismantlingh ELV’s are delivered at th shreder including license. The average age is about 15.5 years. He explained in Switzerland in 2000 was a sales peak of new cars, so it’s expected that within 2-3 years about 30.000 extra cars wil becomeELV’s. A lot of cars are exported to the east and to Africa. Organic wastes cannot be landfilled and waste is incinerated for energy recovery. For ASR (auto shredder residue: >60.000 tons/year ) a big plant is set up. The Swiss fund is filled with money from the first owner via the inporters. Once it was 80 francs, now it’s only 1,-. The fund is still quite filled and money now is used for a shredder fee of 18,- and for research. ASR needs to be mixed with filter ash and Municipal waste to controll incineration temperature. Daniel ends his speech with a question: Do we feel the EU 95% is a realistic target?
The next pesentation was held by Professor Chirsitian Ludwig. His presentation was of both scientific and philosofical character. In short he explained that recycling always leads to less quality and he feels efficiency is ignored by simply setting a 95% target. This target doesn’t seem to bother about costs and energy, necessary to reach 95% and sometimes is ecologically of no benefit: If it costs more energy and effort to recycle than it gains in reduction of waste or energy, you’re past your goal. Recycling is only efficiënt when the ecological gains are higher than the ecological costs. He illustrates this with examples like old landfils that are being cleaned up. He claims it’s better to focus on quality and to take out the remaining 3,5% metals from the ASR.
Third speaker was Daniel Böni. He manages the incinerator and PST installation. They see all metals, including heavy metals as precious metals and feel their procdure to get them back from the waste is a form of urban mining. A ton af waste equals 300 liters of fuel, 200kg minerals,and 25kg metals. ASR is 50% mineral, 45% organic and 5% metals. After incineration at 600-800 degrees C, it’s 90% mineral and 10% metals. From the organics, the energy is recovered. The metals have changed shape to little drops and can be separated to a mix of 5% mineral and 95% metals. Ferro is easily separated, the rest is non ferro and the smaller the particles, the more precious metals are between them. This way of recycling means: No organics in landfill, energy recovery/production, simple metal recovery, cheap. This plant is a public initiative in which 38 municipalitis participate. In this plant 25.000 tons a year are incinerated. It’s investment was earned back in 3 years. The plant is paid 130 francs/ ton waste. 20% is ASR.
The afternoon was for the closed EGARA meeting. Main points were missing vehicles (unfair competition) and parts data (one of the solutions for producers, to do better reports about recycling). Next Fall Meeting will be in November in Holland, with a visit to the PST factory, next Spring Meeting will be in May, in Stavanger, Norway.
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