Amstetten orders BLUE ANGEL Containers

AMSTETTEN DISTRICT EUROPE’S FIRST MUNICIPALITY WITH BLUE ANGEL BINS FOR WASTE AND RECYCLABLES

16.10.2017

Europe’s pioneering local authority: the municipal service provider for environmental protection and taxes of Amstetten, Lower Austria, has equipped the entire district with Blue Angel waste and recyclables containers.

For several years now, policy and the municipal waste disposal department (municipal service provider for environmental protection and taxes) in Amstetten district have pursued a policy and associated strategy of sustainability. Out with the waste economy, in with the recycling economy: that is the objective.

In many municipalities of the Amstetten district, bio and residual waste have already been collected separately for over 20 years. Now the remaining municipalities are changing over to the environmentally friendly system of separate collection. The old multi-chamber bin is to be replaced by separate bins for bio and residual waste. This will make the system more efficient, more environmentally friendly, and consequently more cost effective in the long term.

In the resulting changeover to a strategy of sustainability, the new waste bins bear the Blue Angel ecolabel.

In 2016, ESE, the supplier of the bins, became the first manufacturer to be awarded the BLUE ANGEL ecolabel for its plastic waste and recyclables containers.

Waste and recyclables containers can be awarded the ecolabel "The Blue Angel – Made from Recycled Plastics" if they contain a minimum proportion of 80% EuCertPlast-certified recycled plastic. Recycled plastic has a significantly superior LCA (Life-Cycle Assessment). Compared to new material, recycled HDPE saves 100% of oil raw material. The energy consumed in the production of recycled HDPE is only 12% of the energy required for the production of new HDPE. The overall environmental impact of production from recycled HDPE only represents about 35% in CO2 equivalent of that from production using new HDPE.

The system of independent certification by Blue Angel guarantees that the recycled plastics used are inoffensive to people, animals and the environment and that a recyclables container was genuinely made from at least 80% recycled material.

"Of course, we are delighted to be playing a pioneering role in European environmental protection in this way" – this sentiment is shared by MP and Mayor Anton Kasser, the Chairman, and Wolfgang Lindorfer, PhD (Eng), the Manager, of the Municipal Service Provider. "Especially in our field of waste recovery, recycling plays a key role, and it is only natural if one way we fulfil our sustainability obligations is by procuring more environmentally friendly recyclables bins."

By the end of 2017, there will be over 25,000 Blue Angel recyclables bins in the Amstetten region as a whole.