About WasteCulture
WasteCulture.com is a global knowledge hub for sustainable waste management — independent, and free from financial, professional or political influence.
We believe that the key to overcoming the planetary crisis lies in sustainable waste management. That's why we connect people from politics, science, business and society:
Explore Our Content
WasteCulture.com is built by its community — from brand-new members to leading experts. Every contribution adds another piece to the global picture of waste culture. You'll find News, Papers, Culture Stories and Recommendations, as well as Best Practices — real examples, tied to a real name, place and point of contact.
Find content by:
- Countries – updates and insights from around the world
- Materials – Biomass, Construction Waste, WEEE - Batteries, and more
- Technologies – Collection, Composting, Energy Recovery, and more
- Strategies – Awareness & Training, Final Sinks, Marine Litter, and more
Content comes from across our community:
Members
Our members contribute valuable content by sharing an abstract from their own publication or by publishing something important. Once approved, it becomes part of the member's profile and helps them build their reputation within the community.
Every member's profile is visible to the community, showing their areas of expertise and interest – making it easy to connect with the right people. You can also create a profile without making it visible; in that case, you're a registered user and won't appear in searches.
Looking for someone specific? Go to Members and use the search function to find people, projects and expertise from across the community.
Members
Country Leads: A Link Between Global Knowledge and Local Implementation
Global waste management needs local voices to share. Our 11 Country Leads track the most important developments, contacts and events in their countries, and keep the "Current State of Waste Management in ..." overview up to date. (Web Talks are coming soon.)
Far beyond reporting, Country Leads act as a link between global knowledge and local implementation. 'Co-create' means turning shared insights into collaborative projects. They facilitate developments within their countries by connecting people and initiatives and helping to turn ideas into action. This enables them to become project creators in their own countries.
Country Leads
Co-Creation Projects: Turning Knowledge into Action
Much of the world's waste is still uncollected – or ends up in dumpsites and landfills that release methane and CO₂. Solving this takes shared knowledge: projects adapted from successful initiatives elsewhere, developed collaboratively across countries and regions.
Country Leads help make this happen – sometimes leading a project themselves, sometimes simply connecting the right people. Partners Who Share contribute their expertise along the way.
Co-Creation Projects
Partners Who Share
WasteCulture.com grows through an expanding network of partners – companies, local authorities, associations and grassroots organisations – who share their experience through Best Practices and Culture Stories: real examples, tied to a real name, place and point of contact.
For partners, this builds visibility and strengthens their environmental commitment. For Country Leads it helps to identify who should be involved in or consulted on specific projects, supporting faster and more effective project development in the interest of the environment.
Partners Who Share
Advisory Board
The Advisory Board provides guidance to the operational team at WtERT GmbH, offering strategic input for the development of the WasteCulture.com platform. As the overarching body for quality assurance, it reviews and monitors key aspects such as content, partnerships, and structural direction. In doing so, the Advisory Board strengthens the platform's integrity – supporting the development of sustainable waste management.
Advisory Board
Team of WtERT Germany
Our Background
WasteCulture is operated by WtERT Germany GmbH. The aim of WtERT Germany is to promote sustainable waste management solutions worldwide.
35 Years of Experience in Waste Management
For more than 35 years now, my team and I have been actively involved in shaping Germany's outstanding waste management system. This includes more than 10 years of research projects in landfill sites, stand-out construction projects for composting and fermentation, and the general planning of the world's first sorting plant at an international airport (MUC).
We have been operating the municipal network ForumZ since 1996 and are delighted with the lively exchange of knowledge that now takes place among the municipalities firmly anchored in their respective regions. In order to always have access to the latest published knowledge, we have been cooperating with national and international specialist publishers, event organizers, and scientists for around 25 years to make their publications available to our network and a broad specialist audience. This has resulted in well over 40,000 publications being archived and linked to their authors.
In 2009, we seized the opportunity to become part of the WtERT network, raising our knowledge and the experience of our partners from local authorities, academia, and practice to an international level. What I have found in terms of solutions at all levels of waste and recyclables management, from prevention to optimal recycling, never ceases to amaze and fascinate me.
From WtERT to WasteCulture
That is why we have also taken on an active role on a global scale in setting up the WtERT Decision Support System and, as a first step, anchoring much of our knowledge and contacts in WtERT.net.
I am infinitely grateful for the experiences I have had in this context — I have formed friendships with many of the people I have met on my travels.
Against this backdrop, if I were to summarise my findings, it would be that outstanding solutions can only be achieved through the interaction of technology, social acceptance, and the companies involved, and that this requires a good set of rules, i.e., good governance, which sets the framework and monitors expectations.
A Broader View of Waste
In an ideal world, all stakeholders would keep planetary boundaries in mind and start dealing with waste when dealing with things: where they are designed and produced, how sensibly they are transported, why we buy them, and whether we handle them with care.
Even though I am convinced of the enormous importance of overcoming the global disposal of household waste (profit) for the reduction of greenhouse gases (politics), and know that this can only be achieved if waste is recycled AND thermally recovered (technology, acceptance), I see the identity of my work as broader.
Today, my motivation is to create a network in which people are inspired by great ideas and solutions, where they share their own ideas and are happy when these ideas are taken up and adapted to create the best possible solution somewhere else in the world (explore, share, and co-create).
With this identity in mind, it was obvious to place all of this under the heading of a shared waste culture. The term is still poorly defined — I understand it to mean that those involved are aware that every small and large interaction with waste contributes to protecting the climate and the environment, thus expressing their own culture.
It is important enough to give this movement a name: WasteCulture.
— Werner Bauer