Coimbra develops project to reduce tariff for solid waste in water bill
The Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra (IPC) is developing a project that allows each citizen to pay only the undifferentiated waste they throw away and that reduces the water bill, it was announced today.
In a statement sent to the Lusa agency, the IPC said that the “LIFEPAYT“ project, which is in the testing phase, with samples of the population, in Lisbon, Aveiro and Condeixa-a-Nova (Coimbra), aims at “that citizens pay only what you throw into the undifferentiated garbage container and separate more at home to have access to a more just tariff ”.
In Lisbon and Condeixa-a-Nova the system applies to commercial producers and, in Aveiro, to domestic waste.
“The PAYT (‘pay-as-you-throw’) system allows each citizen to pay only the undifferentiated waste they throw away,” notes the note, stating that, in this way, “it makes it possible to reduce the value of the management fee solid waste in the water bill ”.
According to the IPC, in Lisbon, the major waste producers, such as supermarkets and hospitals, which adhered to the new tariff, signed a contract with the municipality, with “each delivered container has a sensor with a serial number and the frequency is recorded collection in a database ”.
In the case of Aveiro, Catarina Sousa, project manager and researcher at the Escola Superior Agrária de Coimbra, explains in the statement that “each citizen receives an electronic card to use the containers that are on the public road”.
“These containers have a rotating drum, in which a 40 liter bag fits. Only residents with a card can use the containers. These only open after reading them. When passing the card in the container, information about the user is sent to the digital platform, keeping track of the day the bag was placed there ”.
Still in Aveiro, where the project is applied at the domestic level, in addition to recycling, another alternative related to the composting of organic waste is being implemented, which will allow an even greater reduction in the bill, “since these are the ones that most weigh due to the presence of water ”.
In Condeixa-a-Nova, the waste containers “have a ‘chip’ and the data is read through a specific system that exists in the vehicle, passing the information automatically to the digital platform”, and subsequently forwarded to a database for analysis.
In this way, according to the IPC, “who produces garbage is associated with the amount of undifferentiated waste it produces, whether in domestic or commercial terms”.
“The payment is monthly and the invoice is sent by the municipality to whom it adheres”.
Also according to Catarina Sousa, the objective of the measure is “to encourage the increase of recycling and this will allow a reduction in the final bill, since citizens have a lower volume of undifferentiated waste”.
With this environmental awareness, the promoters intend to “lead to an increase in recycling, so that Portugal meets the environmental targets imposed by the European Union”.
Original news in Diário As Beiras
