How we recycle our trade fair waste

Saskia Balke-Homberg All articles of author

28. March 2025

NürnbergMesse is an employer, host and event venue. As everywhere where people come together, waste is produced here every day. But what happens to the rest of the festival? We take our waste very seriously: we separate it whenever possible. We continuously optimize its disposal. And we have established modern recycling processes that allow us to recover recyclable resources.

Whether in the office or in the exhibition hall - our aim is to reduce waste. Nevertheless, unavoidable waste always remains at trade fairs, events and in the office. We dispose of and recycle this waste responsibly. As a site operator and event organizer, we collect, dispose of and process waste for our customers. To this end, we work primarily with the EMAS-certified waste management company 'hofmann denkt'.

Not all garbage is the same

Separating waste by type is an important prerequisite for disposing of it in an environmentally friendly way or recycling it as far as possible. At NürnbergMesse, responsible waste management starts with the differentiation of waste for disposal.

Event waste is generated during exhibition operations. This includes, for example

Carpets
wood
Mixed waste

After the events, the event waste is collected in labeled 1.^1m3 containers on the exhibition grounds and emptied regularly by our disposal partners, "hofmann denkt".

Commercial waste is generated in the office - it is similar to household waste. This includes, for example

Paper, cardboard, cardboard packaging
plastics
textiles

trash graphic — Image credit: NürnbergMesse

Valuable secondary raw materials from commercial waste

The commercial waste is collected at the "DIE GRÜNEN ENGEL" processing center at the port of Nuremberg. We feed the recyclable waste into the material recycling cycle. At RESSOURCENWERK, a merger of NGV Nürnberger Gewerbemüllverwertung and GRÜNEN ENGEL, the collected waste is sorted and recycled in accordance with commercial waste regulations.

In 2022, the plant achieved a sorting rate of 99.8% and a recycling rate of 30.7% - thus exceeding the requirements of the Commercial Waste Ordinance (Section 6 (5) NewAbfV).

This means that as much of our commercial waste as possible is turned into valuable secondary raw materials - i.e. recyclable materials that can be used to manufacture new products.

How is waste turned into valuable substitute fuel?

The above-average sorting rate is the result of a lot of manual work: in the resource plant, a grab excavator transports the waste onto a conveyor belt. Employees then sort the waste in three stages. First they filter out film and plastics. Then the metal parts. The remaining combustible materials such as plastics, paper and wood are processed into refuse-derived fuels (RDF) in various grain sizes in further processing steps.

RDF is used, for example, in addition to other fuels to generate energy. A coarser grain size with a high calorific value replaces fossil fuels such as coal and gas in power plants and in the cement industry. Wood waste is processed separately and then used in the chipboard industry.

Refuse collection vehicle from "hofmann denkt" — NürnbergMesse works together with the EMAS-certified waste management company ‘hofmann denkt’, which does a lot of manual work to separate the waste.

Image credit: NürnbergMesse

Conclusion: We get the best out of leftovers with a system

Our waste management system uncovers potential waste savings - and makes the journey of our waste more and more efficient. It is part of our comprehensive environmental management system, which was certified by TÜV-Süd at the beginning of 2024. Together with our ServicePartners, we develop concepts to reduce the amount of waste at our trade fairs and further improve waste recycling.