Information about pollutants and waste will be standardised internationally

Bern, 29.09.2009 - The Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers, ratified by 16 States including Switzerland, comes into force on 8 October 2009. As a result, information about pollutant releases will be standardised internationally.

The UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers was signed in May 2003 in Kiev by 36 States and the European Union. On 27 April 2007, Switzerland became the second country to deposit the instrument of ratification of the Protocol to the Secretary General of the United Nations in New York.

The objective of the Protocol is to allow businesses, authorities and individuals to obtain information about annual pollutant releases and waste transfers by large industrial facilities and diffuse sources in national pollutant registers on the Internet. Within the framework of the Protocol, the same reporting requirement and data collection criteria apply to all member States, which means that information is comparable. Furthermore, by standardising the pollutant registers of internationally active firms, the same measurement methods and calculation models can be used at different locations.

Switzerland's current legal basis fully complies with the Protocol, whose requirements were incorporated into its Ordinance on the Register relating to Pollutant Release and the Transfer of Waste and of Pollutants in Waste Water, which came into effect on 1 March 2008. Both Swiss data and links to registers in other countries (see box) have been available since February 2009 in the SwissPRTR (Pollutant Release and Transfer Register) on the Web site of the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN).

BOX:
What is the SwissPRTR?

PRTR stands for "Pollutant Release and Transfer Register." The SwissPRTR pollutant register, which was made accessible to the public for the first time in February 2009, provides annual information about the releases of 86 pollutants and transfers of waste and hazardous waste. Releases can be defined as emissions in the air, water and soil.

Industrial facilities that fall within one of the nine sectors defined by the Ordinance and exceed a specific capacity, report the quantities of pollutants that were released or transferred to waste water in the previous year. In addition, they indicate the quantity of waste and hazardous waste that was transferred out of their facility. The data that have been published to date refer to the first year of data collection in 2007 and include reports from approximately 200 facilities.


Address for enquiries

Georg Karlaganis, Head of the Substances Soil, and Biotechnology Division of FOEN, tel. +41 79 415 99 62
Christoph Moor, Substances Soil, and Biotechnology Division of FOEN, tel. +41 31 322 93 84



Publisher

Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications
https://www.uvek.admin.ch/uvek/en/home.html

https://www.admin.ch/content/gov/en/start/dokumentation/medienmitteilungen.msg-id-29254.html