Rodrigo Aire Torres on transfrontier shipments, the three walls every TFS project hits, and the phrase his grandfather never meant to apply to waste management.
This is the seventh in a series we are calling 10 Years. 10 Lessons where BFS team members share what they actually learned from their hardest projects.
- Rodrigo Aire Torres is a Project Manager in BFS’s Transfrontier Shipments (TFS) division, coordinating cross-border movement and disposal of hazardous waste under the Basel Convention.
- Three challenges arise in almost every project: aligning local and international regulatory frameworks, finding qualified local suppliers in countries without hazardous-waste infrastructure, and obtaining timely responses from Basel Convention focal points.
- He moved from the renewable energy sector to BFS specifically because waste management projects have a measurable impact within months — not years.
- His takeaway is: My grandfather used to say that there are always two problems that represent an opportunity: people are always hungry and always sick. I would add: people always generate waste, and this is a third problem that we must address and that represents a great opportunity.
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53.6M t Global e-waste generated in 2019 — only 17.4% formally collected & recycled Source: Global E-Waste Monitor 2020 |
2 days
Minimum calendar time for one message exchange with a Basel focal point 12+ time zones away Source: Rodrigo Aire Torres, BFS TFS |
188+ Countries party to the Basel Convention — each with its own focal point, definitions, and response timelines Source: Basel Convention Secretariat |
Rodrigo, how did you end up at BFS?
Through Daniela. We studied together and stayed in contact through our careers. At some point, she started telling me what she was doing at BFS, the projects, the countries, the problems being worked on. And I found it genuinely interesting.
Before BFS, I worked in renewable energy — a sustainable, impact-oriented sector. But it felt static, with mid- and long-term impacts, and the results were too distant to feel tangible. I wanted to work somewhere where I could see the impact within months.
BFS gave me exactly that. Waste management projects, particularly in developing countries, are immediate. The problem is visible. The waste is there. The need is real. And when a shipment moves and the waste reaches treatment, you know it.
You started in Technical Consultancy before moving to TFS. What made you switch?
In TC, we develop the full plan for a waste-disposal project. The regulatory pathway, the treatment options, the logistics, the documentation. It is rigorous and necessary work. But most of the time, once the plan is delivered, TC steps back, and someone else executes it.
I wanted to be in the execution. I wanted to talk directly with the companies actually treating the waste, arrange logistics, manage Basel Convention notifications, and coordinate movement from the origin to the final disposal point. TFS does all of that. When the opportunity to move over came, I took it.
What are the biggest challenges you face in a typical TFS project?
Three things come up in nearly every project.
The first is regulatory alignment. We work across many countries simultaneously. Each country has its own legal framework for hazardous waste, its own definitions, its own requirements for packaging, labelling, documentation, and treatment standards. Our job is to take all those local requirements and map them against the Basel Convention, the international framework that governs cross-border hazardous waste movement. Getting those two layers to match across every country involved in a single shipment is the core complexity of the work.
The second is local supplier capacity. In many of the countries where waste originates, there is no established hazardous waste infrastructure. No one is certified to repackage the material. No one is qualified to label it correctly. No one is trained to certify the container. We need those people before a shipment can move. Finding them, or finding companies that can put qualified workers into those countries, takes time and adds cost. There is no shortcut.
The third is communication with competent authorities. Every country that has ratified the Basel Convention has a designated focal point. These are the officials who process the notification applications, review the documentation, and grant or deny consent for a shipment to cross their border. In theory, the system works. In practice, some focal points are slow responding, under-resourced, or simply hard to reach. You can wait weeks for a response that determines whether a project timeline holds or collapses.
And then there are the time zones. We are currently working on a project in Kiribati. When I send an email at the end of my working day in Europe, it is the middle of the night in Kiribati. When they start their day, I am asleep. One exchange takes two days. That is the operational reality.
What does working in this field actually feel like day to day?
Every project brings a different waste stream, a different regulatory context, a different set of actors. The challenges are consistent across categories but differ in specifics. That keeps the work from becoming routine.
There are definitely moments of friction. The pace of regulatory approvals, the difficulty of finding qualified local partners, and the communication gaps. But those are also the places where BFS adds the most value. The markets where it is easy to move hazardous waste across borders are not where we are most needed.
What would you tell someone reading this about why this sector is worth working in?
My grandfather had a phrase. He used to say that the best businesses are food and medicine, because people are always hungry and always getting sick. I always thought about that in terms of resilience. What problems never go away?
I would add one more. People also always generate waste. Every single day, everywhere in the world. And the volume is increasing. The infrastructure to manage it, especially the hazardous streams, is nowhere near adequate in most countries.
There are not many specialists in this field. That means the problems are large, the need is real, and the people who know how to do this work are genuinely useful. The first steps in any new market are difficult. But we already have a baseline, a network, a methodology that works. From here, the only direction is more countries, more waste streams, more scale.
“My grandfather used to say that there are always two problems that represent an opportunity: people are always hungry and always sick. I would add: people always generate waste, and this is a third problem that we must address and that represents a great opportunity”
Rodrigo Aire Torres, TFS Project Manager, BlackForest Solutions
About the series:
BlackForest Solutions turned 10 in March 2026. Instead of a celebration, we asked 10 team members to share the hardest lesson from their hardest project. This is what a decade of doing the work actually looks like.
About Rodrigo Aire Torres:
Rodrigo Aire Torres is a Project Manager in the Transfrontier Shipments division at BlackForest Solutions GmbH. He manages the cross-border movement of hazardous waste under the Basel Convention, coordinating regulatory approvals, logistics, and local supplier engagement across multiple countries simultaneously. Before TFS, he spent one and a half years in BFS’s Technical Consultancy division. He joined BFS from the renewable energy sector.
Project at a Glance
| TFS Operations | Snapshot |
| Scope | Cross-border hazardous waste movement under Basel Convention |
| Current active geographies | Multiple, including Kiribati |
| Key regulatory framework | Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes |
| Core operational steps | Regulatory mapping, Basel notification, local supplier engagement, logistics coordination, final disposal confirmation |
| Previous role at BFS | Technical Consultancy (1.5 years) |
Basel Convention: The international treaty governing the cross-border movement of hazardous and other wastes. Countries that have ratified the Convention must notify and receive consent from all countries involved in a transboundary shipment before it moves.
TFS (Transfrontier Shipments): BFS’s operational division for cross-border hazardous waste logistics, covering Basel-compliant documentation, routing, and treatment network coordination.
Focal point: The designated national authority responsible for processing Basel Convention notifications and granting or denying consent for hazardous waste shipments entering or transiting a country.
TC (Technical Consultancy): BFS’s advisory division, covering regulatory compliance design, waste system planning, feasibility studies, and capacity building.
FAQs: Basel Convention, Transfrontier Shipments & Hazardous Waste Management
Q1. What is the Basel Convention and why does it matter for hazardous waste shipments?
The Basel Convention is the international treaty that governs cross-border movement of hazardous and other wastes. Any transboundary shipment of hazardous material requires prior written consent from every country involved — origin, transit, and destination — before the waste can legally move. It is the legal foundation for all TFS work at BlackForest Solutions.
Q2. What is a Basel Convention focal point and what role do they play in waste shipments?
A focal point is the designated national authority in each Basel-signatory country responsible for reviewing notification applications, evaluating documentation, and issuing or denying consent for hazardous waste shipments crossing their border. Response speed varies significantly by country — and delays at a single focal point can stall an entire shipment timetable.
Q3. What are the biggest challenges in managing transfrontier hazardous waste shipments?
Three challenges appear in almost every project: reconciling local hazardous waste regulations with the Basel Convention’s international framework, finding certified handlers and repackaging capacity in countries with no established hazardous waste infrastructure, and obtaining timely responses from national focal points whose workloads and resources vary widely.
Q4. Why is qualified hazardous waste handling capacity so limited in many developing countries?
Hazardous waste infrastructure — certified repackaging facilities, trained technicians, compliant container certification — requires sustained regulatory demand and capital investment to develop. In countries where enforcement is limited and waste volumes from industry are low, the commercial incentive to build this capacity has historically been absent, leaving critical gaps that TFS operators like BFS must navigate project by project.
Q5. What is the difference between BFS’s Technical Consultancy (TC) and Transfrontier Shipments (TFS) divisions?
TC designs the regulatory pathway, treatment options, and documentation framework for a waste disposal project — the plan. TFS executes it: managing Basel notifications, coordinating local suppliers, arranging logistics, and confirming final disposal. TC delivers strategy; TFS delivers movement.
Q6. How does BlackForest Solutions manage Basel-compliant hazardous waste shipments in remote or under-resourced markets?
BFS maps local hazardous waste regulations against the Basel Convention’s requirements, identifies or mobilizes qualified local handlers, prepares the full notification package for all countries involved, coordinates logistics, and maintains the compliance archive through to confirmed final disposal. For markets with limited infrastructure, BFS may bring qualified workers directly into the country.
Q7. Why is hazardous waste management considered a resilient career sector?
Waste generation is a structural consequence of human activity — it does not decline with economic cycles, technology shifts, or policy changes. The hazardous fraction of that waste is growing with industrialization in developing markets. The number of qualified practitioners who understand both the regulatory and operational dimensions of cross-border hazardous waste is small relative to the scale of the problem, making specialist expertise consistently in demand.