Table of Contents

Starting Scenarios to become a Zero Waste City

Scenario 1: Starting from scratch to quickly improve waste management

https://zerowastecities.eu/tools/starting-scenarios-to-become-a-zero-waste-city/

Baseline scenario

  • Between 1 and 50,000 inhabitants: small-sized municipality
  • Low waste generation between 280 and 400 kilograms of waste per
    inhabitants per year
  • Collection of biowaste between 0 and 20% - almost nonexistent and most
    of it happening through home composting
  • High reliance on disposal, mostly through landfilling. Low disposal fees

What are the main policies to focus on?

  1. Introduce sufficient separate collection infrastructure:
    Based on the already existing system and complementing the bio-waste collection scheme, separate collection should evolve to at least collect separately paper/cardboard, commingled plastic, metal and drinking cartons, as well as organics of course.

  2. Implement a separate bio-waste collection scheme:

  • home-composting boxes and the setup and maintenance of community composting
  • complemented with a door-to-door bio-waste collection scheme if a significant part of the population lives in dense areas within the municipality.
  1. Adopt flexibility regarding the treatment of sorted and residual waste:
  • Adopt a strategy prioritising waste prevention and recycling over disposal avoiding the lock-in effect that can be created after a contract for an incineration plant.
  1. Start implementing and promoting waste prevention programs

The Story of Milan - Successfully collecting food waste for over 1.4 million inhabitants

  • densely populated with 1.4 million inhabitants
  • 95 kilograms of food waste collected per inhabitant and an overall 62,6% waste collection rate, resulting in savings of approximately 9000 tonnes of CO2 per year.
  • Average EU level on recycling of bio-waste: 16%
  • the EU has made bio-waste waste1 collection mandatory for all Member States by the end 2023.
  • waste management company AMSA

  1. According to the Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EC), bio-waste is “biodegradable garden and park waste, food and kitchen waste from households, offices, restaurants, wholesale, canteens, caterers and retail premises and comparable waste from food-processing plants”. It means both food waste from
    households or restaurants (leftovers, peels or bones) and garden waste. ↩︎