UBA-MizAV

The German Waste Management Act (KrWG) requires with regard to the national Waste Prevention Programme in cooperation with the federal states the definition of appropriate benchmarks for the chosen waste prevention measures. They should allow the assessment of achieved progress in the decoupling of economic growth from the generation of waste and related impacts on human health and the environment. The KrWG offers the option to define concrete quantitative or qualitative indicators. The waste prevention programme already mentions various possible indicators for certain measures, sectors or material flows. However, there are considerable knowledge gaps if those indicators are actually able to indicate the root of waste generation or the effects of waste prevention measures. Against this background, the objective of this project is to analyse potential evaluation benchmarks and indicators for measuring the success of waste prevention, as well as to test if they are suitable for measuring the success of the strategies in the waste prevention program. Based on the test results, there will be a set of indicators elaborated in order to allow a constant measurement of the waste prevention measures' success.

The project will be conducted by a consortium including the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy GmbH (project management), Ökopol Institute and the Ecologic Institute. The Wuppertal Institute will contribute its experience in the field of analysis and development of concepts, instruments and evaluation approaches with regard to waste prevention on regional, sectoral and international levels.