what end?
More than fifteen years after Spain began in the collection of urban waste , the recycling of materials
presents disparate levels of success. Do you recycle?, What is the balance?, Do you accept citizenship?, Is not it better
reuse and reduce to recycle? Any evaluation requires nuance. The
collection of glass, paper and cardboard has more than acceptable results, in Catalunya than 55% of total consumption. Instead, recycling of household plastic packaging - initiated in the late nineties, is the weakest point of management. The recovery
organic fraction of waste is only incipient (though it has taken a big leap in Barcelona), and there are few initiatives to prevent the generation of municipal waste, whose relentless rise has only stopped the crisis.
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DEPTH Environment and Sustainability
Citizens
, waste management
Given these results, lack of awareness campaigns (although have been many) and more yellow containers are needed in many places in Spain. "Some governments do not provide the source separation. In Valencia, as in many cities, two miles from where we are, there is not a container for packaging light yellow, or blue for paper and cardboard," says a neighbor of Valencia.
Materials
poorly selected container in the yellow light should be placed containers (plastic, cartons and cans). However, 30% of the materials are poorly selected (improper), although this percentage is only 24% in Catalonia, according Cicloplast. "We need more campaigns to improve the quality of what they learned, too accidentally found in the yellow cardboard," said Teresa Martinez, director general of Cicloplast. In the yellow bin mistakenly deposited glass, paper, videotape, or textiles. Poor separation complicate the task in sorting plants.
Gaps in plants selection
selecting plants and plastic containers - where is the yellow container loading are becoming more modern and separated by several different procedures and plastic containers so they can be reused. But for more screens and filters that are made, they are unable to cope with the huge amount of different plastics that end up here. There are all types, sizes, shapes and volumes - bottles, plates, trays ...-, making it difficult to correct segregation. "We must improve the automation of plants," says Teresa Martinez.
Reductions in recycling plants
Between 15% and 30% of material from sorting plants can not be used in recycling industries due to losses in the process, says Andrew Parrott, manager Anarpla, the association of recycling companies. "We get dirty equipment and also abundant mixed plastic materials, double-ended, PET and PVC together for example, which involves extra costs and the need to return to pre-select," he adds. Ecodesign
Product
components should be simplified to facilitate the work to the people and who knows what else is plastic and subject. The experts claim that are manufactured and designed plastic containers with materials designed from the ground up to be then recycled. "We need to promote eco-design," says manager Anarpla. Experts claim that plastic containers are designed so as to reduce the use of materials and achieve a lower weight, which helps facilitate the management of these wastes.
Fraud on the green dot.
has increased the number of yellow bins in the street, thanks in part to funding that provides a cost overrun on packages (marked with green dot managed by Ecoembes), for which the municipality installed containers. But still many companies are not attached to the management system and bypass Ecoembes not to pay, which defeats a higher degree of implementation of yellow containers. Ecoembes judges fraud by 10% (12,175 companies now attached to the green point), but other sectors believe that this percentage is actually much higher.
"If you just walk towards recycling, we do not get rid of the waste problem. We need tools for prevention and reduction," said Genoveva Català, director of the Waste Agency of Catalonia. The Government has requested that the new state law addressing waste packaging design (to mix materials and subtract weight) and reducing of sobreenvasado.
Now better reuse
Many experts judge that to overcome the low rate of recycling of some wastes in Spain should introduce the system of deposit and return system for used packaging. The container, once used, would return to trade, where it was sold, with the aim of which is reused or recycled, and the client would receive a small amount left on deposit. This procedure would retrieve and bring back the old formula used container that was in force until the late sixties of last century. Glass containers soda or milk was returned to the store to exchange for the return of five pesetas.
Thus, the client would take awareness of environmental cost is put into service packages and the industry would have to assume that is primarily responsible for packaging waste.
This system has been key in countries like Germany and the Scandinavian countries, where it has successfully completed the collection of yellow container to create a second material recovery circuit.
The proposal has been endorsed by the Fundació per a la dels Prevenció Residus and was published in Barcelona a few days ago to become Returns, a network of institutions, administrations, universities and trade associations to recover.
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