Valuable Garbage – The Business with Waste Paper

The Kazakh oil fields are hotly contested. Western and Russian oil concerns both want to access the huge reserves. Kazakhstan has been playing hard to get, and trying to make deals with both. Steinbeis Temming is one such example. The company's managers are unsure whether they'll be able to pass the high costs on to customers. Meanwhile, private waste disposal companies are battling with local authorities over the right to collect old newspapers and magazines. The struggles are played out in the courts and on the streets. Made in Germany has been to Hamburg, where the city's rubbish processing plants compete with private firm Remondis for the lion's share of the market- using dustbins to mark territorial boudaries. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Karsten Clodius has been collecting waste paper for the Hamburg Sanitation Department for nine years. Rising prices for used paper have made it a lucrative market, and competition is growing. These days Karsten Clodius and his co-workers are having to fight for every recycling bin: "We're on the front line here and we want to win the battle." But competitors have already begun distributing their own paper bins to homes in Hamburg. Not every residence has a bin for waste paper and now rivals like Remondis want to distribute as many containers as possible. But some people are annoyed by the prospect. The residents don‘t know where to put the many bins: "We hardly have room! We have a gray bin, the green bin, and now a blue one." The bins distributed by Remondis look just like the municipal ones. Now that every bin of waste paper is sought after in Hamburg, employees from the municipal sanitation department like Karsten Clodius are worried about losing their jobs to the competition: "I hope the courts or someone else can put a stop to this. Otherwise it's going to hit us hard." But Remondis is continuing to expand. Here thousands of bins are waiting to find a new home. Iris Keppler works for Remondis in Hamburg: "So far we have about 3 thousand bins in use and as you can see, we have more on the way. I think we can distribute about 40 to 50 thousand in Hamburg." Collecting used paper is an industry worth billions. For paper mills, waste paper is their most important raw material – and one that keeps getting more expensive. Old newspapers, magazines, brochures and documents are used to make new paper, and this factory alone requires 800 tons of discarded paper – every single day. The company recently invested 45 million Euros in its paper re-processing plant. In a complex process, all forms of ink are separated from the waste paper. At the end of the line, the paper machine turns out rolls of white paper again. The higher cost of waste paper has put the factory like Steinbeis Temming Paper Factory in a tough position. It can't keep passing on price increases to its customers. Now the plant is having to search for ways to slash its production costs: Hans-Gerd Lachmann works the Steinbeis Temming Paper Factory: "We're trying to offset the increase through other measures, by reducing our fixed costs, and by focussing our investments in production technology and information systems." Back on the streets of Hamburg, Karsten Clodius and his municipal co-workers make their rounds. Normally the waste paper collector is a easy-going and mild-mannered. But when it comes to saving his job, he's ready to put up a fight.

DW-World | April 8, 2008

Tags:. .plants. .material. .germany. .containers. .alone