The board for innovation and circular economy of municipal waste management in Spain (Grupo de Reflexión sobre Innovación y Economía Circular en la Gestión de Residuos) has elaborated 10 key ideas to improve costs for prevention, reutilisation and recycling.

Last June, during the City Forum (Foro de las Ciudades) in Madrid, the director of the chair of Ecoembes Environment at the Technical University of Madrid (la Catédra Ecoembes de Medio Ambiente de la Universidad Politécna de Madrid; UPM), José Vicente López, presented 10 key ideas to improve municipal waste management. A document elaborated by the board for innovation and circular economy of municipal waste management has been corrdinated by the Chair of Ecoembes.

The aim of those ideas was to present the main measures that are necessary to apply to municipal waste management in order to get cities on the right track towards a circular economy, thereby resolving problems in waste management involving not only the managers and politicians, but citizens themselves.

In summary, the 10 ideas are:

1. In the innovative field of prevention: The creation and promotion of networks and second-hand markets, measures to reduce food waste or the development of el Plan de Contratación Pública Verde.

2. Establishing standardized and regulated waste management measures to promote the collection as well as preparation for reutilization and recycling of streams, such as textiles, with growing impact on municipal waste.

3. Amend the legislation so that bio-stabilized material is considered compost or a marketable product, mainly considering the product quality and not so much the origin of the waste collection.

4. Explore the collection of fees considering the polluter and adjust them for municipal waste disposal.

5. Distinguish waste generated in households (domestic) and larger polluters (commercial waste and waste of offices, markets, restaurants and cafeterias, etc.) The latter are easily identifiable, locatable and provide large amounts (more than 30% of the total) of high quality waste.

6. Create channels of communication/education/information between entities in the sector/ technical administration/legislators to facilitate access to public data derived from the management itself, ensure the necessary training of municipal technicians and proper decision-making on management waste.

7. Designing a system of obtaining and processing standardized data, comprehensive and common to all autonomous regions and local authorities in order to ensure an adequate control of the service.

8. Inform citizens about the real costs of municipal waste management.

9. The citizen as an active individual in the system rather than passive.

10. Social innovation starts to eliminate waste management from political debate by assuming importance of the environment in all its facets in the municipal area.

Read the original Spanish article here: http://www.residuosprofesional.com/diez-ideas-clave-gestion-residuos/