Federal Act
on the Protection of the Environment
(Environmental Protection Act, EPA)

¹ Waste must be re­used or ma­ter­i­ally re­covered if this is tech­nic­ally pos­sible and eco­nom­ic­ally vi­able and has less im­pact on the en­vir­on­ment than an al­tern­at­ive form of dis­pos­al or the man­u­fac­ture of new products.

² In ac­cord­ance with the prin­ciples set out in para­graph 1, the fol­low­ing in par­tic­u­lar must be re­covered:

a.

re­cov­er­able metals from waste, wastewa­ter and ex­haust air treat­ment residues;

b.

re­cov­er­able parts from un­con­tam­in­ated ex­cav­ated ma­ter­i­al destined for land­fill;

c.

phos­phor­us from sewage sludge and from an­im­al and bone meal and food waste;

d.

waste suit­able for com­post­ing or fer­ment­a­tion;

e.

ni­tro­gen from wastewa­ter treat­ment plants.

³ If ma­ter­i­al re­cov­ery is not pos­sible in ac­cord­ance with the con­di­tions in para­graph 1, the waste must be pri­or­it­ised first for ma­ter­i­al/en­ergy re­cov­ery, and secondly for en­ergy re­cov­ery only.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the quant­ity of phos­phor­us to be re­turned to the eco­nom­ic cir­cuit from mu­ni­cip­al wastewa­ter or from sewage sludge pro­duced by cent­ral­ised wastewa­ter treat­ment plants. It shall do so based on do­mest­ic re­quire­ments.

⁵ The ob­lig­a­tion to ma­ter­i­ally re­cov­er phos­phor­us from sewage sludge shall be deemed ful­filled when the per­son de­liv­er­ing the sewage sludge proves to the en­force­ment au­thor­ity that, for the de­livered quant­ity of sewage sludge, the quant­ity of phos­phor­ous stip­u­lated by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil has been re­turned to the eco­nom­ic cir­cuit. The op­er­at­ing and cap­it­al costs not covered by the pro­ceeds from the products, such as phos­phor­ic acid, shall be borne by the pro­du­cers of sewage sludge.

⁶ If it is proved that the ob­lig­a­tion to re­cov­er phos­phor­ous from sewage sludge, as set out in para­graph 5, has been ful­filled, the sewage sludge may be used as a sub­sti­tute fuel without the re­quire­ment to re­cov­er phos­phor­ous from it.

⁷ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may re­strict the use of sub­stances and products for cer­tain pur­poses if this will pro­mote the sale of equi­val­ent products made from re­covered waste without sig­ni­fic­ant loss of qual­ity or ad­di­tion­al cost.