CASE STUDY
Milan – The first metropolis in Europe with intensive source separation of food waste 121
advertising, a free computing application, newspaper and radio plus TV advertising and a toll-free hot line.
Additional awareness activities have been held for those areas where the quality of collection is lower than average.
Table 1 Source separation scheme for food waste in Milan
Kitchen 10 litres vented caddy
Bags Compostable according to EN 13432 standard
Collection Wheelie bins 120 or 240 litres in size Collection
frequency
2 per week (households)
6 per week (for hotels, restaurants and cafeterias)
The initiative that was initially implemented in just one zone of the city in 2012 was expanded gradually to all four of the city’s zones by 2014. By December 2013 food waste was being collected in three quarters of the city, reaching 77% of the population, and accounting for nearly 1 million inhabitants. Thus Milan became the first metropolis in Europe to have extensive Source Segregation Organic (SSO) collection. By the end of June 2014, food waste collection had been extended to 100% of the population (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 Areas with food waste collection
Figure 2 shows the fast growth of collected food waste for each of the three sectors in which separate collection is under way (since November 2012, June 2013 and December 2013, respectively). It clearly shows that collection becomes fully functional in about 4 to 6 weeks and about 1.7 kg is collected per inhabitant per week, with an average annual collection of 91 kg per capita.
These amounts also include food waste collected from the hotels, restaurants and the catering sector. A detailed assessment of MSW composition indicates that about 84% of the total food waste produced in Milan is collected by separate collection, while about 16% still remains as residual waste.
Figure 3 appears to suggest that contamination (presence of non-compostable material) is less of a problem in downtown and outer areas once the scheme has been under way a few months, but becomes more of a problem over time in ‘popular dwellings’ (buildings for low-income families). Popular dwellings are more critical (not only for SSO) and are monitored constantly and the collection with average contamination values (in that area) up to 5-6% is still acceptable at the AD composting plant. Separate collection at high-rise buildings poses challenges everywhere and not only in popular dwellings.
The cost for MSW management service is borne by the Municipality of Milan. Each household and commercial activity has to pay a waste fee, according to the dimension of the apartment and the number of residents.
For commercial activities, the fees depend on the type of activity and area used for the activity.6
AMSA floated a tender7 for the transport and recycling of food waste in 2012. A private company (Montello) won the tender and is paid a gate fee of 74 to 80 euros per tonne of waste delivered for treatment to their AD composting facility for the production of biogas and compost. This facility serves 2.5 million inhabitants and is located 60 km from Milan. The produced compost8 is sold for use in agriculture and fetches modest revenues compared to the gate fee and biogas is transformed into heat and electricity, of which electricity in excess of captive consumption is sold to the Italian National Electricity Grid.
As reported by AMSA and the Municipality of Milan, even after introducing the separate collection of food waste, the total expenses incurred by the MSWM system did not change. In practice the amounts of workers and trucks for residual waste collection were reduced and assigned to the separate collection of food waste.
Disposal costs9 in Milan province vary between 94 to 100 euros per tonne.
6 A 3-person family living in a 90m2 flat paid about 300 euros per year in 2014.
Commercial activities are divided into 30 categories, each with a different cost per square meter.
7 While AMSA is responsible for door-to-door collection and transport, it can tender out or sub-contract some services.
8 The quality of this compost is certification by CIC, the Italian Composting and Biogas Consortium.
9 Gate fee for disposing of waste, not including the collection costs.
Figure 2 Weekly food waste per inhabitant collected in 3 of the 4 waste management zones (Primaticcio, Zama, Olgettina) within Milan City in 2012 and 2013
Source: AMSA (Azienda Milanese Servizi Ambientali, A2A Group)
Figure 3 Quality of the food waste collected in Milan. Vertical bars indicate the standard deviation from the mean value of the biowaste collected
0,0%
1,0%
2,0%
3,0%
4,0%
5,0%
6,0%
7,0%
8,0%
9,0%
10,0%
Downtown Outer area Popular dwellings
Average
% Non Compostable Materials
after 1 month from the beginning after 8 months from the beginning after 14 months from the beginning TOTAL AVERAGE
Note: Vertical bars indicate the standard deviation from the mean value of the biowaste collected.
Source: AMSA (Azienda Milanese Servizi Ambientali, A2A Group), waste composition analyses performed by the Italian Composting Association 2 months after scheme launch 8 months after scheme launch 14 months after scheme launch
Milan – The first metropolis in Europe with intensive source separation of food waste 123
Good teamwork between the Municipality of Milan and AMSA has enhanced the extent and visibility of all initiative of communication and PR activities.
Results achieved
The quality of the food waste collected is high. The waste composition analyses performed by the Italian Composting Association CIC aimed at quantifying the amount of non-compostable materials (NCM), show that, on an average, NCM are 4.3%10 of the collected material, putting Milan in line with good practice. Apparently the amount of NCM does not depend on the collection zone or the time elapsed from the beginning of the new collection scheme (see Figure 3). Once contamination starts to rise, control is increased, fines are applied and more information is delivered in critical areas by means of leaflet distribution and advertising in local news media.
Customer satisfaction shows that 90% of citizens are satisfied or sufficiently satisfied by the new collection scheme and participate daily in separate collection.
The new system collects around 91 kg of food waste per capita per year (1.7 kg/capita per week) that would otherwise have gone to landfill. The city’s residential and commercial food waste, which are collected separately, have resulted in 120,000 tonnes (about 18% of total generation) of waste per year being diverted from landfill
10 Non-compostable materials are all non-compostable waste delivered together with food waste, like glass, metals, multilayer packaging, etc. Good results in separate collection in Italy, according to the Italian Composting and Biogas Consortium, should stay below 5% NCM, hence Milan’s result is quite good.
Excessive amounts of NCM (above 15%) can affect the ability to recycle the food waste.
The importance of good public communications Initial challenges were the on-time distribution of kitchen caddies and biobins, gaining the involvement of the population and continuously monitoring the quality of the collected food waste. To increase participation and ensure sustained attention to the topic, intensive information activities including repeated press releases were begun one month prior to initiating separate collection. The initiative was rolled out in about 18 months (1 waste area every 4 to 5 months) to allow continuous visibility for about two years, which helped in reinforcing the concept among the residents and other users. While a fully user-friendly scheme, with generous delivery of sorting tools (the vented kitchen bin + biobags) and convenient frequencies for emptying the biobins, acts as an incentive for participation, quality checks at the biobins and fines for defaulters maintain the seriousness of the initiative in the eyes of the public.
and being treated to generate 5.4 MW11 of energy, leading to total savings of 8,760 tCO2 per annum.12 Producing compost from the food waste also helps the city to avoid methane emissions and close the carbon and nutrient cycle. About 15,000 tonnes of high quality compost are generated from Milan’s food waste and sold for use in agriculture.
11 The anaerobic digestion facility treats 285,000 tonnes overall, including waste from surrounding areas, and generates 12.8 MW of electricity in total. Almost all of that green energy is used to power a nearby plastic reprocessing plant.
12 Calculated by Italian Composting and Biogas Consortium based on DEFRA UK calculation tool (2011).
Lessons learned
The most important lesson learned is that intensive source separation can be introduced with good results in high-density areas, with population up to 7,000 persons per square kilometre, and that the amounts collected and the quality of the food waste (in terms of contamination by plastics and other non-compostables) is acceptable at industrial composting and AD plants.
Full engagement of local authorities and waste collection companies is necessary to bring about, extend and continue actions and raise public awareness and consciousness about correct methods of separating waste. This can lead to good participation and high satisfaction towards the services provided to customers.
WASTE
GOVERNANCE 4
CHAPTER
A particular focus of the GWMO is waste governance, starting here by looking at policies, responsibilities and partnerships. The chapter showcases a range of policy instruments that are applied around the world, in relation to the policy goals they seek to achieve. The chapter also highlights the local circumstances under which these instruments are deployed.
Before embarking on an exploration of individual instruments, the Chapter starts with a Summary (4.1) and an introduction on policy, governance and strategic planning (4.2). Subsequently, three main categories of policy instruments – legal, economic and ‘social’ – and their implementation are presented (4.3 through 4.6). The next two sections discuss stakeholders and their interactions (4.7), and highlight the roles of governmental institutions in particular (4.8). Finally, lessons learned from experiences worldwide are presented (4.9).
© George Clapton
4.1 SUMMARY OF THE CHAPTER – KEY MESSAGES ON WASTE GOVERNANCE
• Waste governance starts from strategic goals and guiding principles. It addresses policy instruments, institutional arrangements and capacities and stakeholder interactions.
– Formulate explicit and clear goals; plan how to achieve them. Formulate the goals carefully – the goals express the very purpose of the system, and thus determine its elements and the way they interact.
Waste prevention is an important goal, not only for developed countries but also and particularly for developing countries.
• Communicate, facilitate involvement, engage in exchange with the actors in the system. Spend time on building citizen and stakeholder engagement into policy-making processes. Make sure that those who are key to the success of the system are on board.
• Good governance requires consistency in decision-making applied to all levels and all dimensions of the system. Make sure that the strategic goals are reflected in choices made throughout the waste system, not only those related to policies and institutions but also, and particularly, technology selection and financing structure.
– Take charge of the technology selection process at the level of governance, not at the level of technical management. Understand the function and purpose of technological options, rather than just their features, and study their performance and real costs before making a selection.
– Aim for financial sustainability of the system. As a part of it, aspire to cost recovery in relation to services with directly visible benefits to the users, such as waste collection. In developing countries, the capital needed for the construction of processing or disposal facilities will require other sources of financing such as the central government, while operation and maintenance could be financed locally.
– In cases where waste collection systems or facilities were developed through donor-financed projects, make sure to establish appropriate cost-recovery mechanisms for their operation for the period after the project – and donor funding – end.
• Experience suggests that an effective waste system calls for a continuous use of three categories of policy instruments in a coherent mix: (a) ‘direct regulation’, comprising legislation accompanied by its keen enforcement, (b) economic instruments, providing incentives and disincentives for specific waste practices and (c) ‘social’ instruments, based on communication and interaction with stakeholders.
– While policy instruments had previously focused on waste generators and the waste sector, they are increasingly focusing on producers, including manufacturers, brand owners and importers, in consideration of the entire life cycle of materials and products. This is part of a broader societal trend toward sustainable consumption and production.
• Direct regulation serves to protect common interests in a society, such as public health and the environment.
A combination of legislation (laws and derived regulations) and its credible and consistent enforcement has resulted in the waste industry as we currently know it – otherwise waste would be dumped at the lowest cost.
– Laws and regulations define basic concepts such as waste and hazardous waste, clearly allocate responsibilities, set standards of environmental performance of facilities and operations, and state sanctions in cases of non-compliance and violation.
– A ‘direct regulation’ approach is based on information and monitoring; therefore, a commitment to reporting and inspection in combination with good and continuous data management are essential.
– In order for businesses – both waste generators and the waste management industry – to plan their operations and investments into the future, they need ‘regulatory certainty’. This entails the passing of coherent and clear legislation (laws and derived regulations, including incentive and sanction measures) and fair and consistent enforcement.
• While monitoring, inspection and enforcement tend to be costly in terms of institutional capacities required,
‘direct regulation’ will remain a preferred policy instrument in situations involving high risks to society and serious consequences of non-compliance, such as the handling of hazardous waste.
Waste governance 127
• A relatively recent addition to waste legislation addresses waste reduction and recovery of resources from waste, in terms of materials, nutrients and energy. These laws and regulations are as much a response to the increasing costs of waste management as to the value of the resources recovered.
• Economic instruments serve to steer stakeholders’ behaviours and practices towards strategic goals through market-based incentives and disincentives. For example, a pay-as-you-throw (PAYT) charging system for residual (mixed) waste will reward people for segregating their waste; taxes on landfilling or incineration will discourage opting for these methods; fiscal benefits will encourage private companies’
investment in SWM. When in doubt whether or not such instruments are appropriate, look at the system as a whole.
– If one of the main goals is to get disposal under some level of control, then taxes on disposal are certainly out of place. In contrast, PAYT may turn out to be beneficial to raise awareness and help segregation at source.
– In developing countries, subsidies may simply not be affordable for the government to finance, in the face of various other claims in the society.
– Extended producer responsibility (EPR) will hold producers and importers accountable for the products they place on the local market.
• ’Social’ instruments rely on communication, awareness raising and interaction between the government institutions and the public and other stakeholders.
– It takes more than just providing information to change people’s attitudes and behaviours. Encouraging people, engaging with communities, and leading by example are at least as important.
• Waste governance will also depend on the institutional framework in place and capacities of institutions to prepare legislation and particularly to enforce it, to collaborate among them and with the private sector, and to engage with the public. For the effectiveness and credibility of enforcement, it is better to keep the two roles – that of legislator and that of regulator (enforcer) – separate.
• Incorporate monitoring and evaluation into implementation, to measure performance and gather feedback and lessons from practice. Communicate with the stakeholders throughout – good waste management is in everybody’s interest.
4.2 INTRODUCTION
4.2.1 Introduction to waste governance
Current effective waste management systems in countries around the world are the product of a gradual learning process in urban and industrial environmental management that was initiated decades or even centuries ago.
Starting from problem recognition, often as the result of some sort of crisis, the systems began to take shape through formulation of policy and its translation into legislation, accompanied by the development of physical infrastructure and facilities to tackle the waste problem. Strategic thinking usually came in later, in accordance with broader national development priorities.
As a domain of high public interest, waste management requires public policy to be developed, establishing its general goals, and stipulating guiding principles and decision-making criteria to inform the process of preparing waste strategies for achieving the established goals. The general goals – or driving forces (drivers) behind the policy formulation – include the protection of public health and the environment, as well as the recovery of resource value from discarded products and waste materials.1 The guiding principles in waste policies in various countries include several of the following: waste prevention, duty of care, polluter pays principle, universal service coverage, inclusivity,2 subsidiarity principle, precautionary principle, cost recovery, proximity and self-
1 The drivers for waste and resource management are elaborated in Section 2.3.
2 In some Latin American examples, inclusivity is an explicit goal rather than ‘only’ a guiding principle – policies are formulated with the primary goal of inclusion of informal recyclers, in addition to public health and the environment.
sufficiency.3 The articulated guiding principles may not necessarily be mutually consistent or compatible; hence their translation into instruments may require additional effort to clarify the priorities among them.
The policy and strategies are given ‘body’ through their translation into legislation and other instruments that are to support their implementation. While starting from the same policy, the instruments can be different in nature and purpose, as illustrated in Figure 4.1. Usually they are applied in combination, to ensure their optimal effectiveness and maximum benefit to the system. Which particular instrument is deployed depends on the goal they are envisaged to achieve. For example, in order to ensure installation of (costly) technological measures for environmental protection, these measures should be stipulated as mandatory for a waste facility to get a license. If the goal is to divert waste from disposal to other management options, landfill taxes or bans are likely to be effective. If the goal is to increase waste segregation at source, various communication approaches – as well as suitable infrastructure – are needed to influence people’s attitudes and behaviour, based on the understanding of their realities, including their daily routines and concerns.
Figure 4.1 Policy instruments for waste and resource management
PROVIDE ECONOMIC INCENTIVES AND DISINCENTIVES for specific
actions & behaviours
DIRECT OR FORBID practices (usually those that impact on
public health &
enviroment
INFORM, INTERACT, ENGAGE
‘Direct regulation’
& enforcement
‘Social’
instruments Economic
instruments
These policy instruments are prepared or implemented by various governmental institutions, agencies or organizations in accordance with their specific mandates and the institutional arrangements defined between them.4 How the government and its institutions engage in interaction with other stakeholders in the system has to do with a broader issue of governance.
While state power – through its governmental institutions, policies and legislation – is an important, even predominant determining force in developing strategies and taking decisions, it is not the only one. An engaged state negotiates policies and seeks agreement to its processes and practices with those who are a party to, or otherwise affected by, its decisions. These include not only a few powerful stakeholders but also others. Hence, the term governance is used here to denote institutions and processes, both formal and informal, which provide for the interaction of the state with a range of other actors or stakeholders affected by the activities of government. The concept of governance thus embraces an inclusive consideration of stakeholders, with a particular emphasis on the inclusion of the people in decision-making process, including those in underprivileged and poor communities.5
3 These principles are explained in Annex C under Glossary of guiding principles.
4 As they are established for the purpose of serving the system, governmental institutions, agencies or organizations can also be seen as an instrument, albeit of a different kind from policy instruments.
5 Sometimes this is referred to as participatory governance.