Giavini - Innovative evaluation of economic data on source separation schemes in Lombardy - 2010

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INNOVATIVE EVALUATION OF ECONOMIC DATA ON SOURCE SEPARATION SCHEMES IN LOMBARDY, ITALY M. Giavini1, C. Garaffa2, A. Ribaudo3, G. Ghiringhelli1 1 Ars Ambiente Srl, Gallarate, Italy 2 Novamont Spa, Novara, Italy 3 Regione Lombardia, D.G. Reti e Servizi di Pubblica Utilità, Milan, Italy Contact: Dr. Michele Giavini, Ars Ambiente Srl, V. Carlo Noè 45, 21013 Gallarate, Italy. Tel: +39 0331777991, E-mail: giavini@arsambiente.it EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Intensive source separation of organics (ISSO) represents a strategic decision, and is Italy’s key factor for reaching an overall high performance of residential recycling schemes. It both maximizes organics diversion from landfill, and reduces the amount of putrescible materials inside residual waste to less than 10 percent. These ISSO results are directly related to high collection frequencies for organics, and tools sets provided to the citizens. Specifially, small kitchen buckets and yearly supplies of compostable bags for collecting the food waste help citizens overcome the “yuck factor,” and secure high participation rates. This paper presents an economic evaluation of the main separate collection schemes already in place in Italy, based on data processed by the author and published in a recent report by Lombardy Region. A detailed analysis was conducted on overall costs for municipal waste management in 2008, using the comprehensive raw data reported by all the municipalities of Lombardy Region. Municipalities are required to report this information using an on-line database managed by the regional Environmental Agency. This dataset is interesting both for the high number of municipalities accounted (1.546, with about 9.700.000 inhabitants), and the presence in the same region of both main types of collection scheme used in Italy: “fetch” curbside schemes (typically ISSO) and “bring” schemes based on large centralized containers placed on the roads. This survey introduces a new comprehensive indicator, which expresses normalized overall costs for waste collection and treatment per equivalent inhabitant, and strongly lessens the bias and the variability that was present in raw data expressed using the traditional total cost per inhabitant. The main outcomes from this survey can be summarized as follows:  As already acknowledged, average diversion rate of municipalities performing curbside collection, mostly with ISSO, is significantly higher than those still adopting centralized road container schemes (averaging 53.2 percent compared to 30.5 percent).  The analysis with a variability plot on overall costs for subsets of municipalities with the same recyclables diversion rate shows that they remain unchanged, or even decrease with higher diversion;  With higher diversion rates, collection costs slightly increase (especially with over 60 percent diversion), but not as much as was commonly thought before this study; treatment and disposal costs decrease.  The use of the new indicator reduces the influence of geographic or demographic parameters showing that costs don’t change much between densely and sparsely populated areas. These results give a consistent support to the local authorities involved in waste management planning, especially thinking about setting up ISSO schemes. They act as a guideline when it comes to think about optimization tools and strategies, because they highlight many municipalities with best practices that succeeded in reaching diversion rates up to 70 percent while keeping overall costs low.


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