Dr Joachim Wuttke studied chemistry at the Ruhr University of Bochum, where he received his PhD in organic photochemistry in 1985. From November 1985 to April 2018, he was a scientific employee at the German Federal Environment Agency. From 1993 to 2018, he was head of the section “Municipal Waste Management, Hazardous Waste, Focal Point to the Basel Convention”. From 1990 to 2005, Dr Joachim Wuttke was a lecturer for “Packaging and Environment” at the Beuth University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. He has worked as a short-term expert in EU programmes such as “Twinning” and TAIEX in Bulgaria, Estonia, Israel, the Slovak Republic, Poland, Turkey and Egypt. He has also worked as a consultant for the OSCE and other organisations.
He chaired the project group “Collection and Transboundary Movement of Used and End-of-life Mobile Phones” of the Mobile Phone Partnership Initiative of the Basel Convention. Within the Partnership for Action on Computer Equipment (PACE) of the Basel Convention, he co-chaired the project groups “Transboundary Movement of Used and End-of-Life Computing Equipment” and “Environmentally Sound Material Recovery/Recycling of End-of-Life Computing Equipment”.
From May 2018, he has been working as a consultant (e.g. for the Basel Convention Secretariat) and is, among other things, a lecturer/speaker in particular on issues related to transfrontier waste shipments and waste classification.
He has published more than 75 articles in the field of waste management and is the author of a practice handbook on transfrontier waste shipments.