The municipality of Weßling has been working on extending the permit for the building materials manufacturer Klarwein for years.
This reveals loopholes in the law that, in the eyes of Mayor Michael Sturm, also contradict environmental protection.
Shortly before the general election, a topic that he wants to get moving.
Oberpfaffenhofen
- On the area of Gebrüder Klarwein GmbH near Oberpfaffenhofen you can actually spend the whole day watching. Heavily loaded trucks drive on the site, are weighed, filled, weighed. Between huge heaps of earth, machines and excavators recycle rubble in several steps, which then ends up as secondary building material on one of the hills. The noise is neat. Therefore, the press conference with the siblings Karin, Christian and Andreas Klarwein as well as father Karl Heinz, mayor Michael Sturm, deputy district administrator Matthias Vilsmayer and councilor Rasso von Rebay take place in the company building. Sturm and Rebay insist on a change in the law in favor of building material recycling and gravel mining. Why is a long story.
Theoretically, the permits for the Klarwein company will expire, and in 2023 the recycling plant on Weßlinger Straße in Oberpfaffenhofen would have to move to the company's ten-hectare mining site near Hochstadt. “A waste of economic resources”, as Andreas Klarwein puts it. The company would prefer to go deeper into the rubble recycling business at its current location, "because this is the future even in times of climate change". Long-term permits are required so that the corresponding investments are worthwhile. However, the legal situation does not provide this, as the municipality of Weßling determined when drawing up the development plan with the district office. Much of the topic of building rubble recycling cannot be defined in the development plan. For example, recycling without a gravel pit is not allowed at all."We need the legal framework and would like building rubble recycling to be given a higher priority," says Sturm.
The members of the Bundestag in Berlin only approved the introduction of a substitute building materials ordinance in June 2021. However, according to Rasso von Rebay, there are no new regulations for gravel mining. It remains privileged and limited in time - and cut off from recycling. “That means we're always opening new holes and pouring material in instead of recycling what can be recycled,” says von Rebay, who has taken on the topic in the local council.
The subcontractors of the Klarwein company drive 500,000 tonnes of material annually for backfilling through the area, as far as the north of Munich. “You could recycle all of that, but you would have to invest for that,” explains Andreas Klarwein. That in turn only makes sense if you can stay at the location. “And there is no legal framework for this.” So the company only produces and sells 30,000 to 50,000 tons of recycled building rubble.
In Bavaria alone, 49.6 million tons of construction and demolition waste including excavated soil are generated annually. Only 22.3 percent is recycled. More than two thirds end up in landfills or in pits. Around 1.5 million semi-trailer loads transport these masses through the country. “These are valuable raw materials that could be fed back into the construction industry's material cycle as secondary building materials,” explains Christian Klarwein. The company's employees also support the ecological idea: "They identify with it and want it too," says Karin Klarwein.
Sturm would like to pave the way for building rubble recycling, even if it only succeeds in front of their own front door for the time being. “If the recycling plant had to move, that would be devastating.” At the current location, noise and truck traffic would not bother anyone. District Administrator Vilsmayer held back on the subject with commitments: "In the District Office, we are bound by the bill and only performers," he said. The legislature is required.
But Sturm does not want to give up. “I want to make the topic public,” he says. “Here in Weßling we are virtually surrounded by gravel extraction priority areas. Traffic pollutes the population and also the environment. "The Klarwein company is exemplary for the industry" with the desire to be able to work more environmentally friendly and thus more efficiently ". Much is not regulated there. "The only thing that is certain is that backfilling recyclable materials and the further recovery of gravel pits are no solution."