What measures should your municipality take in order to ensure first-rate management of the collected organic fraction?

It is well known that organic waste gives rise to significant environmental impacts when landfilled or incinerated. An effective strategy for organic waste management aims to recover nutrients from the waste and to avoid emissions, e.g. from landfills. Whatever the starting point, each municipality can undertake a series of measures to achieve an excellent level of management of the organic waste and to ensure that waste is treated in the most environmental friendly and resource efficient way.

First of all, prevention is better than cure and it is therefore this aspect of waste generation that municipalities need to focus on.

Awareness-raising campaigns aimed at preventing the generation of organic waste (especially food waste) can engage and motivate citizens to reduce their organic waste by, for instance, buying less food which potentially may not be consumed and may end up in landfills.

The next key step is establishing a separate collection system for organic waste, so that this is not mixed with (and contaminated by) non-recyclable waste. This is a key element of an effective waste collection strategy.

Once the organic waste fraction is collected by the separate waste collection scheme, you can choose a range of options to treat it, depending of course on local parameters. If your municipality is not large enough to have your own treatment facility, you will need to find out what is available in your region or cooperate with neighbouring municipalities. The collected organic waste can be sent to anaerobic digestion, which results in many environmental and potential economic benefits for your municipality. For instance, the produced digestate (when it meets certain specifications) can be further used for agricultural purposes or distributed to the citizens for free or at a very low price for their gardens, while also benefitting from the energy generated in the process. However, when anaerobic digestion is not available in your region or the economics do not work out, there is an alternative option available: home and/or community composting of the domestic organic waste from kitchens and gardens for example, implemented in households or in small community composting facilities respectively.

So how can your municipality operate a community composting facility?

Municipalities establish community composting facilities in areas where households have no individual gardens for home composting. The idea is to create a local community that will manage each composting facility. The municipality should engage and motivate citizens to separate their organic waste properly and organise training sessions for a set of volunteers from the local community who will take care of the efficient operation of composter.

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