The Disposal of PVC and Plastic at Volkswagen AG between Industrial Incineration and Landfilling, 1955-1980

Referent/in: Manfred Grieger, Wolfsburg

In the meantime, environmental history, which has only recently become a recognized sub-discipline in Germany, could already serve as the subject of a text by Hayden White. The emplotment all too readily assigns to the economic subjects in the stories the role of villains prepared to damage people and nature in pursuit of profit. In contrast, the scientists who understand the inner logic of nature or political activists protecting life against destruction are the heroes. On the basis of this interpretation, their understanding provokes a social conflict which is given force of law by political institutions following a process of negotiation. The modern state supervises compliance with the legal framework and is itself scrutinized by NGOs. Pollution and environmental damage lead to regulation via conflict before companies set the next spiraling mechanism of hazards in motion for economic reasons.
The predominant view of history makes changed environmental awareness the starting point for improvements in environmental history. In contrast, this paper on corporate waste management policy taking the example of Volkswagen demonstrates how the technical innovation of a corporate waste incineration plant developed as the result of engineering logic at the end of the 1950s but was doomed to failure by the requirements of state environmental policy. The starting point for this development was, significantly, the decision taken to use plastics initially for vehicle interiors with a view to remaining competitive with Renault products. The unintentional consequence of this product improvement was a change in the consistency of waste, which did not decompose rapidly and could not easily be incinerated. Demand by society for higher energy efficiency in the wake of the oil price crises led to greater use of plastics with a view to reducing vehicle weight. The two environmental objectives of reduced waste and energy saving became competing goals in the consumer society,
Since the late 1960s, state waste policy, embodied in the Waste Disposal Act, had been mainly based on controlled landfill disposal. The result, following a number of conflicts, was that it became possible for use the municipal landfill in Wolfsburg jointly for the disposal of solid waste in 1977. After the state had rediscovered incineration for waste disposal in the late 1990s, the municipal landfill closed in 2005. Nowadays, household-type waste from the company is shipped to an external incineration plant, while re-usable hazardous waste is reprocessed. About 70,000 tons of residual waste are disposed of on the hazardous material landfill each year.
The paper discusses the possibility that companies could become the motors of environmental protection where this is in line with their technical and commercial logic and environmental policy requirements are combined with economic incentive systems (costs, revenues, efficiency, etc.).