Press release

Augsburg, January 18, 2021

Paper as a raw material is used for a wide variety of purposes and on a large scale. It is impossible to imagine daily life without it. A study by the bifa Umweltinstitut, sponsored by the Board of Trustees for Research and Technology of the Pulp and Paper Industry, now compiles reliable facts on the sustainability of paper production and paper use. On 57 pages, the study provides a comprehensive database especially on the topics of life cycle assessment, energy consumption, wood origin and recycling.

The study establishes that the paper industry uses wood, a renewable raw material that does not cause any greenhouse gas emissions in the balance sheet and does not impair the forest ecosystem when used sustainably. An analysis of the origin of wood indicates that...

Augsburg, 07 October 2020

Minister of State Glauber handed over to the bifa Umweltinstitut a grant notification worth up to Euro 155,000 for the “Hydrogen system study on producing hydrogen from waste” project. The objective of the project is to answer the following questions regarding thermochemical hydrogen production from waste in Bavaria:

• What options for action are available?
• What is the technical, economic and realisable potential of these options?
• Which boundary conditions must be created in order to realise the potential?

The Bavarian Minister of State for the Environment and Consumer Protection (Bayerische Staatsminister für Umwelt und Verbraucherschutz), Thorsten Glauber, and Dr Fabian Mehring, Member of the Landtag and Whip of the Freien Wähler party, visited bifa on...

Augsburg, 29. September 2020

Before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, many disposal companies had problems finding facilities to accept mixed commercial waste for use in energy recovery plants. Their capacities were frequently already fully utilised. After the pandemic has ended, the situation will quickly return to being as it was before. Working on behalf of the Association of Bavarian Disposal Companies (Verband der Bayerischen Entsorgungsunternehmen e. V. - VBS), bifa examined the situation in Bavaria and options for relieving it. The study has been published in the bifa-Texte series.

Based on data in the relevant literature, bifa estimates the quantity of mixed household-type commercial waste in Bavaria to be 925,000 Mg/a. Of this, around 370,000 Mg passes through sorting...

Augsburg, September 2, 2020

• “Made for Recycling” analysis developed together enables reliable compliance
• Sustainable packaging design makes an important contribution to climate and resource protection

The environmental service provider Interseroh and bifa Umweltinstitut, one of the leading application-oriented research, development and consulting facilities in Germany, welcome the new legally binding minimum standard for the design of the recyclability of packaging according to paragraph 21 of the German Packaging Act (Verpackungsgesetz - VerpackG), which provides support for practical implementation of the requirements. The standard was published by the Central Agency Packaging Register Foundation (Stiftung Zentrale Stelle Verpackungsregister - ZSVR) on Tuesday this week.

“The...

Augsburg, 29 January 2020

As part of the ForCYCLE II project on efficient use of dust from foundries, which is funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of the Environment and Consumer Protection (Bayerischen Staatsministerium für Umwelt und Verbraucherschutz) and carried out by the University of Augsburg, bifa Umweltinstitut and other partners in practice, a creative workshop was held at bifa Umweltinstitut in Augsburg with numerous representatives of industry and science.

In the workshop, initial approaches to solving the following issues were worked up together. Which treatment methods are ecologically and economically possible for such filter dust and what are the potential uses for the treated material flows?

Dust produced during the casting of iron is drawn off via exhaust extraction...