Die REMONDIS-Welt der Nachhaltigkeit
REMONDIS' World of Sustainability
De REMONDIS-wereld van de duurzaamheid
The whole notion of sustainability will be a lost cause unless we take action here and now to conserve our planet's natural resources. Future generations and today's developing countries will only be able to enjoy prosperous lives if steps are taken right now to counteract the growing shortages of raw materials. For us – being one of the world's leading recycling, service and water companies – there can be only one goal: to tackle this problem and lead by example. Why not join us on this path?!
Everyone agrees that global warming must be limited to 2°C – or preferably 1.5°C – if we wish to prevent our ecosystem from being irreparably damaged. Large areas of woodland in Germany are dying as the country suffers ever longer periods of drought. Pussyfooting around is not going to stop climate change. Some major action needs to be taken. And not just switching from fossil fuels to renewables but from virgin to recycled raw materials as well. We are showing how this can be done.
The Lippe Plant in Lünen is not only a high tech site, it is also an important project for combatting global warming. The various activities carried out at the site help to cut carbon emissions by 488,000t every single year. For a forest to have the same effect, it would need to contain 37 million trees. Certainly a lovely place to take a walk in but perhaps not an ideal place for creating 1,400 jobs.
People searching for an argument in favour of plastics recycling need look no further than at our seas and oceans. Vast areas of waste are floating around in them and are so big that they can even be seen from space. This problem, however, can only be solved on Earth – with more responsible consumer behaviour and systematic plastics recycling.
Talking the talk but not walking the walk? Not at REMONDIS. It goes without saying that our all-encompassing view of sustainability also includes us being sustainable ourselves. This covers all aspects of our business – from the energy efficiency levels of our head office buildings, all the way through to ensuring that all our locations adhere to our high social standards, no matter where in the world they may be.
Every company tries to make a profit. And things are no different at REMONDIS either. For us, however, money is always a means to a good end – which is why a large part of the profits we make is invested in developing new and innovative recycling processes and technologies. Helping to preserve our planet’s valuable natural resources.
Sustainability is not a state or a condition but an ongoing process. First and foremost, sustainability is team work. Which is why we cooperate closely with experts and research institutes that also feel strongly about conserving our planet’s natural resources and preventing climate change. Such work always leads to new approaches and innovations.
Wherever we see an opportunity to drive forward the notion of sustainability and to fix it even more firmly in the minds of people, then we are there, full of passion and enthusiasm for the cause. This covers a whole range of activities – from educational projects, to acting as advisers, to supporting universities.
Everyone is talking about the scarcity of raw materials and about sustainability. But what exactly is behind it all? We decided to do some research to find out what it’s all about – so that we could put together some pages with the most important background information for you to read.
Be honest: if you were asked, on the spur of the moment, to put together a list of resources that are essential for our life on Earth, would you have added phosphorus? Probably not. And yet phosphorus plays a vital role when it comes to biological growth and energy metabolism. Indeed, it is true to say: no phosphorus – no life. Which makes it all the more problematic that resources of this vital substance are becoming scarce on our planet. What's more, the global resources that we do have are found in just a few countries. Practically all of Europe's phosphorus must be imported and the quality of the raw material is gradually deteriorating as it contains an ever growing amount of pollutants. Innovative processes must be developed, therefore, to recover and recycle phosphorus to reduce our dependency on imports. REMONDIS has been working on this for many years now.
Phosphorus is a vital nutrient for all living organisms and is essential for their growth
Phosphorus is found as phosphate in sewage sludge, the residual material left over from wastewater treatment. Up until just recently, farmers had spread this sewage sludge on their fields as a fertiliser to make the very most of its valuable contents. New quality standards, however, have now been introduced that mean this is no longer possible as the sewage sludge not only contains valuable phosphate but also harmful heavy metals and organic pollutants which are also released into the soil. A solution is needed, therefore, that enables the phosphorus to be removed from the sewage sludge with as few of the harmful by-products as possible. We have found this solution – with our patented REMONDIS TetraPhos® process. Here, the sewage sludge is thermally treated to produce ash. This is then mixed with phosphoric acid which is enriched with the phosphate in the ash. The phosphoric acid produced by this process does not contain any heavy metals at all and is of a higher quality than the raw material from natural resources. There are no restrictions as to how it may be used by industrial businesses – it is ideal, for example, for producing fertiliser and corrosion inhibitors.
REMONDIS’ TetraPhos process won the 2016 Green Tec Award – find out more in the section on Awards
Following the completion of the successful pilot phase in Hamburg, the world's first large-scale plant for phosphorus recycling will be put into operation. And this is just the beginning, because the potential in the field of phosphorus recycling is enormous. Especially in terms of climate protection. If all the sewage sludge produced in Germany each year were to be fed into the TetraPhos® process, it would have the equivalent CO2-compensating effect of 27 million trees. The reason: the phosphoric acid called REPACID® obtained in the TetraPhos® process has a 60 per cent better ecological balance than phosphoric acid that has to be imported as a primary raw material.
The TetraPhos® process truly is recycling at its best. It is like a puzzle piece that fits perfectly into the chain of wastewater treatment, thermal treatment and phosphorus recovery. A sustainable system that fully closes the material life cycle of phosphorus for the very first time. But that’s not all: TetraPhos® does even more. Besides producing the phosphoric acid REPACID®, which is of a much higher quality than the natural raw material, it also generates gypsum from the ash, which can be used by the building supplies trade, as well as iron and aluminium salts. The latter can be used, for example, as a precipitating agent to treat wastewater.
We had developed some other successful systems for recovering phosphorus before we broke new ground with our TetraPhos® process. The so-called REPHOS system was developed by our company to clean industrial wastewater and remove phosphorus straight from the water as magnesium-ammonium-phosphate (MAP). We were one of the first companies worldwide to see wastewater not as a matter of waste management but as a valuable source of raw materials. Indeed, you could say that we were carrying out aquatic mining long before the term even existed. And we continue to see ourselves as pioneers in this field. Aquatic mining still has so much potential. We are bound to come up with our next innovation soon.
We also process phosphorus into struvite
Being one of the world’s leading recycling, service and water businesses with over 30,000 employees, everything we do revolves around sustainability. We ensure that the environment is protected and that natural resources are conserved in over 30 countries across four continents.
Our company
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