The Registered Association for Material Specific Waste Treatment ASA e.V. is the
Federal Association of MBT plant operators and was founded 1997 in Lower Saxony (Germany). MBT stands for Mechanical Biological Treatment of Waste and acts as a pre-treatment step of municipal solid waste or commercial waste similar to municipal solid waste prior to disposal or final storage.
Since 1st of June 2005 it is prohibited according to the Technical Instruction on
Municipal Waste (TASi) and the German Waste Storage Ordinance (AbfAblV) to store not pre-treated residual waste on sanitary landfills.
For the moment there are two concepts in Germany for the pre-treatment of waste: mechanical biological treatment MBT and waste incineration.
Following § 2 of the Closed Loop and Waste Management Law (KrW-/AbfG), the hierarchy of waste handling has been standardised in 1996: - Avoidance
- Recycling
- Disposal
Mechanical-biological waste treatment is a young and innovative process which places the recovery of residual waste on the recycling level directly after avoidance.
Valuable material streams to be recycled are segregated in a first step, e.g. Fe/NE metals. Furthermore substitute fuels (RDF) for thermal utilisation are produced by means of complex treatment technologies. The remaining residuals are processed in biological treatment steps in such a way that no polluted waste sites shall be left to future generations.
With the introduction of MBT technology 1.6 billions € have been invested and multiple working places created. The MBT technology in Germany treats approximately 20 % of the residual wastes and serves as a qualified waste treatment in the EU countries in the neighbourhood. In this context this technology is thriving as a valuable export element of the German industry. | 
