Aveiro at the forefront in European Studies on Technological and Social Innovation. Tech City will bring new pilot projects in the area of ​​waste

Source: Terranova – November 17, 2020

Aveiro Municipality Aveiro concluded, this Monday, November 16, “with enormous success”, the pioneering project in Europe, ‘LIFE PAYT’.

A pilot experiment in the Urbanization of Forca Vouga that aimed to test a prototype surface container for collective use, with access control, for the deposition of undifferentiated urban waste. The project was the target of successive criticisms from environmental collectives, namely from the Portuguese Association of Environmental Education , which criticized what they understood to be the lack of involvement of resident citizens for a “key” access system to containers.

Domestic and non-domestic users in the pilot area, in order to deposit their waste, had to use a PAYT (pay as you throw) card with a chip. For each opening of the container, 30 liters of undifferentiated urban waste produced (PAYT model by volume) were counted. The ‘LIFE PAYT’ project made it possible to perceive, according to the municipality, that the hardware / software system developed “needs to be improved, while the prototype container, despite its improvement throughout the study, still demonstrates some weaknesses, which will be now studied “.

The Mayor of Aveiro says that “in global terms it was a very challenging project, as expected from a pioneering action, but also of enormous success, because Aveiro again makes a very important contribution to the development of Citizenship and Innovations Technological and Social at European level, as is characteristic of us and that can only make us satisfied ”, he said.

The mayor also spoke about the project’s failures, stressing that “it is normal to happen, because it is a pilot project”. “In fact, our difficulties were the same as those experienced by other Portuguese and European Municipalities. What we must emphasize is the fact that we are at the forefront of the European Union, such as City, Municipality and Society, to test this type of solutions”. An experience that he classifies as useful in the European context. “Europe trusts Aveiro to test universal solutions and we will have several European challenges in the area of ​​urban waste and bio-waste that we will have to meet in the medium and long term and that we will certainly only achieve with a spirit of cooperation and social responsibility, knowing that some of them are part of the change in Citizens’ habits, practices and behaviors, which require time and determination, so that the positive evolution that we have achieved in the management of urban waste in the Municipality of Aveiro, continues in the near future ”, concluded Ribau Esteves.

The measurement of data from the residues deposited by residents and traders in the pilot area during the months of September to November 2020, a period in which a second training course in domestic composting was also put forward, will be analyzed, with disclosure in time. timely.

LIFE PAYT led Aveiro Municipality to deepen its studies and knowledge on this matter within the scope of the Aveiro Tech City initiative, with the 1st edition of Aveiro Urban Challenges for startups, scaleups and R&D institutions, and which awarded the best ideas and solutions aimed at solving urban challenges in the area of ​​the environment, energy and mobility. This year, at Techdays, Aveiro Municipality presented the community with the Smart Biowaste solution, a product from the 2bWebConnect company developed with Veolia Portugal mentoring. This new container prototype with access control will soon be tested in the Aveiro Municipality, in a real environment. It is a new surface container for collective use, for the selective deposition of biowaste, with access control, which weighs the waste deposited by each user, rewarding the good environmental practices, that is, a RAYT model (receive as you throw) by weight.

With this container, you will not need an access card, but a code, which can be fixed or instantly generated by an App for mobile phones, as well as there is no container for depositing waste because the container lid opens completely. During the exhibition of this new equipment, public feedback was considered “very positive”. The easy interaction of the container with the APP is the key point.