The City of Aveiro joins an European pilot project to improve recycling

The municipality of Aveiro is one of the partners in a new LIFE project, approved by the European Commission in June.

According to the municipality, PAYT – Tool to Reduce Waste in Southern Europe, will allow the development of “innovative methods, technologies and actions” with the main objective of waste prevention, reuse, and selective collection, encouraging  the adoption of different practices and financing it. “

Reducing waste from households and commercial sector, increasing recycling rates of packaging waste and demonstrating that PAYT is reliable are among the proposed objectives.

This project will be implemented in a pilot zone of Aveiro comprised predominantly of housing, it will be used different strategies to link the waste producer to the amount of waste actually produced, namely using RFID tags in individual garbage bags or giving access to the waste bins through an identification card.

The result is focused on the design of a fair and equitable waste tariff, socially and politically adapted to Southern Europe.

The project, with a funding of two and a half million €, was one of the projects approved in the 2015 LIFE Program call managed by the European Commission.

It will start on September 1 st, 2016 and will run for three years.

The consortium is led by IPC and includes seven other partners: Aveiro City Council (CMA), Lisbon City Council, Condeixa-a-Nova City Council, Larnaka City Council (Cyprus), Vrilissia City Council (Greece), Technical University National of Athens (Greece) and University of Aveiro.

Meanwhile, Aveiro City Council decided to renew the local program “CSI Restauração – Campanha Separa Inteligente”, which was started in June 2015 involving the company ERSUC. A pilot project for door-to-door collection of urban waste, namely glass, packaging, paper/cardboard from catering establishments, located in the center of Aveiro. There are about 82 participating establishments, in two collection circuits, with a three times a week collection frequency.

In June 2015, during the first month of the campaign, 1.32 tons of recyclables were collected and in May 2016, 17.66 tons of recyclables were collected, an increase of 1338% from this selective collection.

At the end of a year of the “CSI Restauração – Campanha Separa Inteligente” campaign, collected 153.3 tons of recyclable waste. “A good result that can be continuously improved”, says the city council.

The goal is to reach 2020 with selective collection levels of 47 kg / inhabitant per year (currently is approximately  33 kg / inhabitant per year).

Original news in the Notícias de Aveiro newspaper.