In Austria, municipal waste advisers are seen as one of the biggest success stories in public waste management. Over a period of three decades since they were first created they have been contributing to raising separate collection rates (in some regions raising them from around zero to over 70 %), saving costs and generating new follow-up jobs.
Municipal waste advisers were first established in the country in 1986 as permanent full-time employees of regionally or locally based public waste authorities. They can be employed in public entities at different levels:
- municipalities/local authorities;
- towns with more than 3 000 inhabitants;
- cities;
- associations of towns/districts;
- provincial authorities;
- associations under public contract;
- waste management entities at a municipal level.
Since the beginning, the underlying idea of employing waste advisers was to use human resources prior to legal restrictions and industrial investments to minimise environmental problems and reduce public expenses (“prevention” instead of “end-of-pipe-treatment”). The concept is: educating the population to prevent and separate waste instead of paying for expensive technical solutions to deal with the waste once it has already been (incorrectly) disposed of. As of 2016, 410 municipal waste advisers are the backbone of public waste management communication and public relations (PR) work. This means an average of one adviser for 20 000 inhabitants.
Municipal waste advisers can also cover other environment-related areas such as sustainability and consumption, but their main focus is on awareness-raising, public education of the population and PR in the field of municipal waste management. Their communication work is focused on waste prevention, reuse and separate waste collection within the local/regional context. Their target groups are children from schools and kindergartens, private households and small and medium-sized enterprises. Interaction is not only direct (person-to-person) but also via dedicated service hotlines or electronic means. Additionally, they consult their regional waste management organisations in planning and implementing collection schemes, and communication projects and campaigns. They further cooperate with private waste management companies and provincial and federal authorities for the development of (innovative) waste management strategies and concepts.
Waste advisers in Austria typically receive a dedicated training. During the years between 1986 and 1995, it was a six-month training programme. Partly due to shrinking public funding and saturation of the job market, this initial permanent training programme has progressively been substituted by shorter training courses and learning "on the job".