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Is Waste Management (still) at the End?

Waste management is the one industry sector that is traditionally located at the end of our eco-nomic system. In this position, and its function to compensate and minimize our society’s im-pacts on human health and the environment due to the inefficient use of resources, we simulta-neously create the legitimacy of any waste of resources. However, the objective of creating a recycling society can only mean that waste management functions have to be carried out not in the end, but at all corners and non-existent ends of the various (product) life cycles.

The transition to maturity of an industry sector regarding its competitive structure is accom-panied by some relevant changes. Starting with a slow growth, which is also reflected in an in-creased competition for market share, the concentration of the competitors on cost and service, the necessarily cautious expansion of capacity and personnel, the more difficult starting point for the development of new products and applications, the increase of global competition to the point of the temporary or permanent decline in industry profits, require the market participants to face new challenges. This classification of waste management as a highly developed mature industry does not stand in conflict to the currently emerging dynamics. Quite the contrary the industry has reached a major turning point at which the future significance of the waste man-agement industry will be decided. The central question is if the waste management industry’s innovation efforts just lead to a delay of the negative aspects of maturity or if it succeeds in moving the known boundaries of the industry leading back into a new phase of expansion. It is therefore a critical development stage in which the consequences are related to the strategic re-actions and decisions as well as the organizational structure of the existing industry participants.
Waste Management as we know it has to face some major key challenges. Its future devel-opment in terms of an adjustment within the medium turn can only imply to bring a comprehen-sive material flow management into an integrated relationship to all life cycle stages beginning with raw material extraction, production, consumption/use, and recycling & treatment. Func-tions and jobs of waste management therefore no longer just take place at the end but in the sense of a commodity management of resources increasingly at every corner of the various life cycle stages. From this perspective there is a variety of potential expansions of existing value chains for a waste management industry that has reached an end with its single most important creation of value, the disposal service. The ability of the waste management industry to build, maintain and utilize existing and potential of future success thus determines more than ever its role in a sustainable economic and social system.

Copyright:	© Lehrstuhl für Abfallverwertungstechnik und Abfallwirtschaft der Montanuniversität Leoben
Quelle:	Depotech 2012 (November 2012)
Seiten:	6
Preis:	€ 3,00
Autor:	Mag. Dr. Hannes Klampfl-Pernold Ing. Mag. Gerald Schmidt Dipl.-Ing. Michaela Heigl
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