Dr. Ingrid Winter, head of the Department Waste and Resource Management at Directorate 14, Office of the Regional Government of Styria, held a presentation at the Recy & DepoTech 2020 Conference, which is the largest waste management conference in Austria with over 500 participants. She explained the forward-looking approaches of the federal state of Styria to implement a resource-efficient circular economy.
The current policy instrument for implementing the circular economy at regional level is the Styrian Waste Management Plan 2019. For the vision of a circular economy by 2050, it relies on three strategic pillars, the improved implementation of the waste hierarchy, innovation and technological development, and environmental friendliness and climate neutrality. One of its priority fields of action is the area of C&D waste, where essential measures are made possible by the CONDEREFF project.
The construction industry is one of the most resource-intensive sectors, contributing more than 70% of the total waste generation in Austria. Despite high recycling rates of mineral C&D waste of well over 80 %, downcycling often takes place instead of high-quality recycling, and the reuse of com-ponents is only just beginning.
This is where the CONDEREFF project comes in. In order to improve quality management and achieve greater consumer confidence in recycled building materials the "Styrian C&D Waste Guide", first published in 2012, was revised and amplified. The core of the revision is the addition of prepa-ration for reuse. Although this is obligatory within the framework of the (orienting) pollutant and contaminant investigation according to the Austrian Recycling Building Materials Ordinance, in practice only a few building components have been reused so far. The Styrian C&D Waste Guide is now available free of charge not only in German but also in English at www.baurestmassen.steiermark.at.
