Adapting Bern’s waste disposal services to the revised Waste Management Ordinance

The revised Swiss Waste Ordinance, which came into effect on January 1, 2016, has effectively released all Swiss companies with more than 250 full-time employees from their obligation to purchase waste-disposal services exclusively from public-sector providers. These companies now have the option of commissioning the services of private companies to meet their waste-disposal needs.

Public and private-sector waste-disposal services

While there is nothing in the revised legislation that prevents large companies from continuing to avail themselves of municipal waste-disposal services, it is clear that such public-sector providers will need to adapt their service provision to the newly liberalized market. Given its interest in winning waste-disposal contracts with large private enterprises, the ERB undertook to implement a number of structural changes to ensure its market prospects.

Adapting to the newly liberalized market

Working in the capacity of an external project manager, EBP helped the Bern ERB and its various departments to adapt their service to the newly liberalized market. The scope of our assignment included implementing changes to take account of the new statutory provisions, developing a separate accounting system for companies no longer subject to market restrictions, modifying internal processes and updating IT systems. In addition to our consulting, conceptualizing and coordinating services, we also completed the following tasks for the Bern ERB:

• Drafting a list of all companies no longer subject to the market restrictions
• Calculating base fees for all customers still subject to the market restrictions
• Drafting a price schedule for customers not subject to market restrictions
• Drafting of templates for correspondence with listed companies