Turning waste into a resource – MVV Umwelt's core competency

The waste volumes used mostly involve municipal waste, commercial and industrial waste and waste timber. Alongside these, we also manufacture refuse-derived fuels (RDF) for our customers. We organise the transport of the waste by road and rail. Our resource managers have access to our treatment plants and to around 1.4 million tonnes of incineration capacity a year. Our power plant capacities and storage possibilities enable reliable and economical waste treatment to be secured in the long term for public sector waste management companies and commercial partners.

Resource management as a key factor for the future

Our resource management team works to meet individual customer requirements based on the different types of waste that are treated. Its key task involves covering plant capacities with the optimal types of fuel. These involve household and commercial waste of all kinds, as well as refuse-derived fuels (RDF), such as mixtures of paper, plastics, timber and packaging residues.

Key parameters in this respect are calorific values, qualities and economic terms. Multimodal delivery possibilities also play a special role and include delivering and unloading waste by rail for larger customers.

Its main target group involves local government and commercial waste management companies. The resource management team is also responsible for the targeted marketing of plant output products - various types of slag, filter dusts and recyclable materials resulting from the mechanical treatment of commercial waste. These are put to new use in a wide variety of industrial sectors.

Waste and non-recyclable timber

Our biomass power plants mostly work with waste timber and non-recyclable timber. The German waste timber market includes around 10 million tonnes of wood used for energy generation purposes every year. Of this total, the plants we operate use just under 390,000 tonnes a year of waste timber and non-recyclable timber, converting this into environmentally-friendly electricity.

Our locations in Mannheim, Königs Wusterhausen and Flörsheim-Wicker have superb links to the transport infrastructure. This is a particularly important factor, as the transport of waste timber only makes economic sense up to a certain distance. Most waste timber incinerated therefore comes from the areas surrounding the power plant locations.

A second life for residues

Incineration of the waste reduces the volume of residual waste to around 10 percent. At modern energy from waste plants, such as those in Mannheim and Leuna, this means that most of the residue material can be used. Non-combustible waste components fall out in the form of slag. This is then treated following a brief period of interim storage. The slag thereby generated can be reused as a material in road construction and landscaping. The metals extracted from the slag serve as valuable raw materials in the iron and steel industries.