After the huge flood, it has to be cleaned up.

The rubbish piles up in great piles on the streets.

Damaged clothes, broken furniture and destroyed dishwashers end up on the garbage heap.

It is not yet possible to say how much waste is generated in the affected regions in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate.

Jan Hauser

Editor in business.

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The sight makes it clear in many places: There will be unbelievable volumes, the Association of Municipal Enterprises (VKU) announced: "We are currently assuming that it will certainly take weeks, if not months, to dispose of everything." They hear from their member companies that the usual annual amount of bulky waste has been collected in three days or that in just a few days the amount from three years.

Even after previous storms, disposal companies were hardly able to get behind the mountains of rubbish. Patrick Hasenkamp, ​​head of the Münster waste management company, is familiar with this. "The experience of the events of the century in Münster in 2014 has shown that a lot of bulky waste is generated when cleaning up after floods, and various types of waste, both commercial and municipal, must continue to be reliably disposed of", says the VKU vice-president. The waste management companies had removed around 10,000 tons of bulky goods in three weeks after the storm. Otherwise there is a total of 6000 tons of bulky goods in one year.

Such mountains of rubbish are now also causing problems for waste disposal companies in the flooded regions. The best thing to do is to get rid of the rubbish quickly to avoid hygiene problems and traffic obstacles. Sometimes local building contractors, farmers with their excavators and the fire brigade busily remove the rubbish from the streets. One piece of advice is that piles of rubbish should be stored on solid ground, such as concrete, so that pollutants do not seep into the groundwater.

How long it will take to dispose of all the trash depends on the final amount. What is certain is that more capacities are needed. The North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Armin Laschet (CDU) wants to dispose of waste in other federal states. “On-site waste disposal has reached its limits. We need supraregional help here, ”he said. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the regulations for waste disposal are also being relaxed so that waste can be temporarily stored. According to the Association of Municipal Enterprises, the situation is tense in Bonn, for example, because quantities from the Ahrweiler district, the Euskirchen district and the Rhein-Sieg district also arrive here.

Much of the waste will hardly be able to be reprocessed in view of the severe devastation. This is also shown by experiences from the floods in Dresden, as Thomas Kügler reports. “When I remember 2002 as a private person, there wasn't much more to do with separating and recycling,” says the current department head of the city's waste management.

Almost 20 years ago, the floods created enormous amounts of waste.

External waste disposal companies helped a lot back then.

Mineral waste such as construction rubble or road demolition can end up in the landfill.

Organic materials such as wood have not been allowed to go there for more than 15 years, but have to be burned.

A bottleneck is to be expected here because the waste incineration plants are mostly full.

The garbage can still be sorted, but a lot will probably have to be burned.

Remondis, the largest private waste disposal company in Germany, sees the challenge in the large amounts of bulky waste.

The volumes are enormous and at least annual quantities can be managed at their locations.

The association of municipal companies also doubts that mineral and organic material can currently be separated easily.

He also warns that illegal metal scrap collectors are on the move in the flood areas, as many washing machines and refrigerators have been destroyed and record prices are currently being paid for scrap metal: "If possible, residents should ensure that electronic scrap is only collected by the municipalities authorized to collect it e-waste is collected separately wherever possible.

In an emergency, the disposal companies help each other.

Personnel, vehicles and containers from companies outside the flood regions come through flooded areas.

For such external use, some municipalities thin out their own collection plans and switch to emergency operation at home.

In North Rhine-Westphalia, the Ministry of the Environment is now also providing support with the “Waste Disposal” coordination office: The municipalities are to inform the district governments in writing what equipment and personnel they need as well as disposal options in waste incineration plants. The district governments pass this on to the new coordination office, which discusses with the waste management associations who can help.

It still takes some time until the garbage is disposed of. However, with the amount of waste, the expenses increase. In any case, there would be additional costs for the waste management companies, notes the Association of Municipal Companies. At the moment it is not yet time to talk about costs. "We are convinced that the foreseeable rise in disposal costs should be covered by the aid programs launched by the federal and state governments," the association said. On the one hand, the waste can often no longer be allocated to individual properties, and on the other hand, affected households are already financially shaken enough. Nevertheless, someone will have to pay for it.