Municipal solid waste

Household waste ( Umg, outdated in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in use in the waste ) is a mixture of waste from households and similar institutions, which is usually filled in Germany in garbage cans and departed from the garbage disposal. Because of the nationwide introduced since 1992 separate collection, the term has been replaced in the art by the more appropriate term residual waste.

In Germany an orderly waste disposal is aimed at and just laid since the 1990s more emphasis on waste prevention, separate collection and recycling for waste from private households since the mid- 1970s. Increasingly, developed from this modern waste management, which is to be developed into a sustainable recycling economy.

Thus some of the original waste disposal methods such as landfilling in its importance declined significantly. Landfilling of untreated domestic waste is banned in Germany since 1 June 2005. Household waste is in Germany, so far as he has not been fed through separate collection for recycling, either in incinerators to produce electricity or heat burned ( about 17 million tons in 2006 ), or treated in mechanical- biological waste treatment plants ( approximately 4 million tons in 2006).

In the separate collection of waste from households following types of waste can be distinguished:

• Residual waste
• Biowaste
• Paper, more cardboard, paper, cardboard (PPK )
• Waste glass
• Lightweight packaging ( LVP ), see Green Dot
• Hazardous waste
• Bulky waste
• Metal garbage in some communities
• Electronic scrap
• Garden rubbish
• Charity shop for textiles

In Switzerland, as a waste of all those only waste that remains after waste separation by consumers.

The first industrial waste separation and partial recycling of waste was carried out in Germany in 1898 at the household waste recycling München GmbH.