Waste to the resource: the strategies of other countries to deal with waste

Take the tea bag. Separate the printed label from one side and the metal hook from the other. Then make sure to cut the white thread that joins the two with the paper bag with the strands. Once separated, place them in containers of different colors as appropriate. This description does not stem from a culinary recipe, nor from a millennial ritual or from a craft. This is an example of what is happening every day in countries like
Switzerland which, after going through a deep ecological crisis, promoted a recycling industry and became a reference for the world in waste management. An achievement that has also reached cities like Amsterdam, San Francisco, Curitiba and Santiago de Chile, having adopted a model of circular economy, and Vienna and Paris with incineration as part of their strategy.

Buenos Aires is going through a borderline situation today, This puts her on alert and compels her to immediately define what she will do with the 18,500 tons of garbage produced daily in the metropolitan area. In five years,
the sanitary landfill of José León Suárez will collapse and cover its capacity for absorption. In the midst of strong controversy, the city is prone to
thermovaluation – a process to burn waste and recover the energy of combustion – as the most effective solution, but its implementation is suspended by a judgment of justice, already filed by the authorities of Buenos Aires.

In Switzerland, citizens know that "the less they throw, the less they pay" (and vice versa) and they testify each time that they recycle materials inside the doors, as in the case of the tea bag, or when they affix an adhesive mark on their bags through which they accept the perception of high taxes. "Our consumer lifestyle requires more than the planet can generate, so that our children and grandchildren can have enough in the future, we must use our resources in a more sustainable way, the solution is recycling" , says Patrick Geisselhardt, head of
Swiss recycling. The garbage police will have to make sure that the by-laws are respected and impose fines on its course: no one is exempted from clbadifying waste for further processing.

With a recycling rate of 70%,
Germany is another of the major nations of Europe which proclaims a similar philosophy, under the "polluter pays" principle, and is convinced that the participation of its inhabitants is vital for guarantee the success of the project. "We have the great advantage of having enacted special laws that regulate funding for the disposal or recycling of waste, without these funds being used for other purposes," said Joachim Wuttke. , from the Federal Office of the Environment, to interview at the
Deutsche Welle.

The model includes a comprehensive system of clbadification and collection with discriminated containers; a packaging decree that obliges manufacturers to collect and reuse them after consumption, which facilitates the return to the market; supermarkets that go from the original packaging and sell the products to bulk weight; and the ban on coffee machines with capsules in public offices because they contaminate, as happened in Hamburg last January.

Cultivate the habits of the house and establish clear rules of the game also promotes the results of
the green mission that faces
Japan . Captured by television cameras, his citizens demonstrated weeks ago in the World Cup in Russia, in the match that they played against Senegal, during the gathering
debris from the stands before leaving the stadium. They usually pick up the waste they generate at home and put it in their own containers, whose clbadification, by type and color, exceeds a dozen. Using handbooks distributed by municipal agencies tells them how to do it responsibly and avoid unnecessary mistakes. Then special trucks that crush the waste on site will pick them up and take them directly to the recycling plants.

] Another interesting mirror for Buenos Aires is
The Netherlands adopted an aggressive policy when, in 1930, alarming figures on underground dumps and lake spills failed its environmental agenda. Thus, the country has completely abandoned the linear economy that governed its products (its useful life has been abandoned) and opted for a sustainable model, that of the circular economy, where management has become the responsibility of the economy. all. "Part of our vision is the call
trías materialis, which means replacing high-impact materials, reducing their use more efficiently and recycling or closing the circle of what is used, "says the Dutch government in one of its working documents.

Amsterdam as
Vienna in Austria, and
Paris in France (although the latter begins), promotes recycling systems from the moment a person gets rid of something they do not need, in containers and points differentiated greens. Even Vienna applies fines to those who do not comply, and examines every six years the pattern that continues. In the first two cases, the citizen pays only for the collection of garbage, unlike what happens here, where the neighbor does it by lighting, sweeping and cleaning.

These three cities of Europe remain under the microscope of the leaders of Buenos Aires and
Ecological Coordination of the Metropolitan State (Ceamse), body responsible for urban solid waste management in Greater Buenos Aires, as part of its strategy of establishing thermovaluation factories. "The disposal of non-recoverable waste is no longer done by burials, but by much more efficient technologies, such as biombad and thermovaluation, a subject no less important for energy needs," he said. warned.


Eduardo Macchiavelli,
Minister of the Environment and Public Space of Buenos Aires, after badessing the reality of the municipality and the benefits of integrating new methodologies. "As a society, we begin to realize that what we do causes damage and that we can not continue in this way," he added.

However, since last month, the alternative of the terminovaloration is paused. On June 29, the Justice of Buenos Aires declared unconstitutional and stopped the reform of the
Zero Waste Law that has helped burn garbage in Buenos Aires, a practice banned since 1976, after understanding that a deeper debate was missing before the rude diagnosis. Although the government is calling for failure, the situation does not yet have new features.

On the one hand, the City argues that there is no place to discard the surplus (which can not be recovered waste) and that, in the short term In the long term, filling will reach the end of its useful life, not at the end of its process, because what is buried today requires 30 years of treatment to prevent most liquids from ending up in liquid form. in the layers or the generation of Methane increases the greenhouse effect. On the other hand, experts, ecologists, cartoons and opposition figures point out that incineration is a serious threat to waste collection programs, since recovered materials become fuel, and they pay attention to the impact of the implementation.
a technology that is neither renewable nor clean and whose combustion generates greenhouse gases, substances that are hazardous to health and waste.

"We have to generate a set of progressive measures, do not switch from filling to incineration The approach must be comprehensive and it is not impossible to achieve it, but the public policies must go this way, not look for shortcuts, "said Andrés Nápoli, director of
Foundation for the Environment and Natural Resources (FARN).

Waste of energy

On the map of solutions, it also appears
Oslo also known as the "green" capital of Norway, which attaches such importance to the protection of nature (established by its own national anthem) and to the separation of waste into colored bags treated in plants, what
it has been left without waste and has been imported since 2009 to generate heating and electricity. The remaining 20% ​​is turned to ashes and buried in landfills. With a similar policy and the WTE program, wasting energy,
Stockholm in Sweden, prevents, recycles and recycles everything first and finally dispose of it in landfills. After successfully recycle
99% of their garbage, the Swedes seek to be the country that does not even generate them.

According to the report of the World Bank
"What a waste: a global review of solid waste management", the times are bad and waste production in the world will rise to nearly 6,000,000 tons per day in 2025.

Change in mentality

Three decades ago, the city of
San Francisco in California, undertook to fight a special battle against waste landfilled and to reduce it to zero next year. In its vast track, it has garnered one of the best recycling indices in the United States (80%) and has received pioneering diplomas, both from the example and inspiration of several foreign municipalities.

a simple but effective containerization system, its inhabitants know when to throw garbage according to the type of waste, and in which of the three baskets of 120 liters arranged in homes, schools and recreational areas. If they are leftovers, they will be in the color green; recyclable material, blue; and irrecoverable material, black. The first will be transformed into compost and sold to fertilize the land; the seconds will be recycled; and the third parties will go to the landfills. "The city is very much linked to the fight against climate change, with the premise that recycling reduces energy consumption and emissions, while composting increases carbon storage in land and biombad and decreases Using fertilizer based on oil and pesticides, everything is aligned with the objectives and promotes their achievement, "said Juan Mateo Horrach, industrial engineer and environmental expert.

School education, where the separation of waste begins, and containerization explain the key points on which is based the idea of ​​San Francisco. However, it is the belief that this model can generate a lot more jobs than incineration as a treatment system, which represents the cornerstone and mentality that l & # 39; made it possible.

Known as the green capital from South America,
Curitiba in Brazil, was declared the first
Latin America's "waste free city" through a system based on social inclusion, technological development, citizen participation and profitability, which reflect their programs.
"Garbage that is not garbage" aims since 1989 to no longer perceive waste as a problem and to consider it as an opportunity, for which children are first trained, then the elderly in the practice of recycling. As a result, 96% of metropolitan waste (per day generates 600 tonnes of recoverable materials) is collected and recycled. In
"Cambio Verde", the other weight project, which lives in marginal neighborhoods, can exchange plastic bags or waste for transport tickets, food (small and medium producers) and health services funded by this initiative. In addition, there are regulations on waste produced outside residences.

Santiago de Chile where 5500 tons of waste are produced daily, represents another approach to consider. Landfills are equipped with infrastructure and technologies to provide them with adequate treatment and the main one is Loma Los Colorados, which receives more than 50% of household waste. A train operated by private companies later transfers it into hermetically sealed steel containers for final disposal. "It's a continuous, safe and sustainable operation," says Fernando Hunt, commercial director of
KDM, after confirming that the train has virtually no impact on the environment because "it eliminates the contamination by the emissions inherent to the transfer by truck". The plant with biogas to develop unconventional renewable energies, the plan
"Santiago recicla", which aims to recover 25% of waste in 2020, and the construction of 30 clean points in 21 municipalities, complete the actions, for the paradigm shift towards a circular economy that governs the world.

Faced with this complex panorama, Buenos Aires could look forward and review the experiences of different cities and countries, while re-arming its own model to improve efficiency in waste management. For the Government of Buenos Aires, there has been significant progress in terms of containerization and separation at source, accompanied by a growing environmental awareness of the inhabitants. However, for the other sectors, as a group of neighbors,
LN Data in a survey of
Citizen Care- line, ecologists and experts, the solution requires a global look, or progressive and joint initiatives covering early education and differentiated collection, packaging and battery laws, and regulations on e-waste and extended producer responsibility

Three alternatives to improve waste management

• 1. Raising the awareness of younger people: educating younger children from an early age and campaigning for waste separation to start in each household are vital strategies for minimizing the impact of waste-generated pollution .
• 2. Containers for Clbadifying Waste: Clbadifying waste into containers that distinguish different types of waste not only facilitates the transportation of the trucks that collect, but also the management of municipalities for their final disposal.
• 3. Incentives and economic sanctions: make citizens responsible by economic sanctions when they do not respect the separation of origin or companies when they do not know, for example, the law of packaging determines how the waste is produced.

With the collaboration of Víctor García (Chile) and Luisa Corradini (France)