“Don’t Waste your Waste”

On 14 – 18 November 2016, the Nexus partner cities delegation visited Solid Waste Management sites in China, concentrating on Maximum Yield Technology (MYT).
The delegation included 24 representatives from the Nexus’ partner cities; Mayor John Bongat (Naga, Philippines), Mayor Lis Darmansyah (Tanjung Pinang, Indonesia) City Councilor Roy Gonzales (Santa Rosa, Philippines), Vice Mayor Boonlua Charoenwat (Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand), Advisor to Mayor Somphet Watthanasap (Chiang Mai, Thailand), and other participants from the national and local levels from India (National Environmental Engineering Research Institute/NEERI, Nagpur and Rajkot) and the Philippines (National Solid Waste Management Commission).

During the 5-day trip, the delegation visited Jiangsu WELLE Environment Co., Ltd’s headquarters in Changzhou, a kitchen waste collection plant also in Changzhou, a solid waste management complex in Hangzhou, which includes the environmentally friendly Tianziling landfill, and the MYT pilot plant, and lastly an incineration plant on the outskirts of Shanghai.

Solid waste management is a major problem for several partner cities of the project and they are using (if at all) inadequate technologies for waste treatment, leachate treatment, resource recovery and energy production.  As these cities continue to grow, solid waste production increases. As a result, the landfills or dump sites are reaching or exceeding their capacities. Land is now scarce and hence an expensive resource and continuously finding new land to build dumpsites cannot be a sustainable solution. Cities are now therefore actively searching for alternative solid waste treatment processes to reduce the waste going into the dump site and at the same time to lower the impact on the environment and the livelihoods of surrounding communities.

MYT is a new, innovative process for treatment and utilisation of municipal solid waste. It aims to extract complete raw material (up to 90%) and energy content of waste and to use the energy potential as recyclable sources of energy. Instead of landfill or incineration solutions, there is now the option of optimum economic exploitation of waste in the form of raw materials, quality-assured fuels and energy-rich biogas. A complete model of MYT is available at The “Kahlenberg (ZAK) MBT Plant” in Germany, which is now treating more than 100,000 tons of residual household waste a year. WEHRLE, Germany, is one of the companies that jointly developed the MYT technology at the Special Purpose Association of Kahlenberg in South West Germany.

With the aim to introduce the MYT to Asia, WEHRLE has partnered with EU WELLE and Jiangsu WELLE Environment Co., Ltd, a Chinese company, to build and operate MYT pilot plants in Hangzhou, China.

This visit enabled the partner cities to see the possibility of achieving sustainability through the application of advanced environmental technologies, improve infrastructure investment efficiency, and recover and re-use resources effectively without consuming huge areas of land. The city representatives took on board the MYT and relevant solid waste management solutions and will engage in further dialogue with the technology suppliers and the GIZ Nexus team for possible implementation in the Nexus pilot projects of their respective cities.

Following the trip to China, solid waste management experts from WEHRLE contracted by GIZ Nexus, visited Danang (Vietnam) and Tanjung Pinang (Indonesia) between 18 to 25 November 2016 to perform feasibility studies for possible implementation of Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) in these cities.