In order to improve the efficiency of the door-to-door waste collection system and to work with more reliable data, the municipality of Tiana has implanted a new collection system based on RFID technology.
This transformative action has been launched by the municipality of Tiana and, apart from improving the efficiency of the door-to-door waste collection system, aims to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the management of municipal waste. The more waste we collect, less CO2 emissions are emitted.
Tiana’s commitment to preventive waste management goes back to 2000 when it was the first municipality in Catalonia to implement the door-to-door collection of organic waste and residual waste. This led to a drastic change in municipal waste management.
Some problems associated with the model implemented appeared after some years:
In 2013 a survey carried out among 12% of Tiana’s population, determined that 72% of the citizens would approve the introduction of a tax associated with waste generation. Three actions were raised:
1. Linking the contribution of all households
2. Homogenisation of the contribution system
3. Implementing technologies to automate monitoring of incidents
The new model of waste collection has multiple components:
The aim is to increase the participation of citizens in the collection of organic and general waste.
A communication campaign was launched on 29 March 2014 and ended on 27 May.
First of all, the municipality of Tiana mailed information to all households. An information point was established with a team of three environmental educators and a coordinator that delivered the kit and gave proper information to users about the new model of containers and how they associate user data with TAG.
Moreover, a door-to-door information campaign was done for those citizens who hadn’t gone to the information point. For those who weren’t at home, we mailed them and directed them to the information point.
The main goal of the campaign was to deliver the kit to 100% of households in Tiana.
Using the technology in the organic waste bins, the city council of Tiana can work more efficiently and with more reliable data.
The technology implemented is:
1) TAG RFID UHF
2) DEVICE RECEIVERS on board
High frequency antennaes with Bluetooth connection to the device management on board collection vehicles.
3) MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
The organic waste bins are taken by the neighbours from their kitchen to the street. They have integrated a TAC that is associated with each home. This TAC is read by the collection vehicles through an RFID antenna. It is a high frequency antenna and if there are any problems with the waste bins, i.e. the garbage is not collected or removed correctly, it can be reported by the workers.
The main results of this transformative action are:
- Greater participation of residents in the door-to-door collection, in terms of organic and other waste
- Increased number of homes participating in the door to door collection
- Improving the image of the public zone
- Decreased presence of abandoned bags at public zones
- Reduction of the amount of waste deposited in emergency areas, especially bags of unusable waste
In 2015, the municipality of Tiana collected 700,280 kg of organic waste with the door-to-door waste collection system, which represents 16% of the total waste collected.
If we analyse the evolution of the amount of organic waste collected in the years 2013-2014-2015, we observe that 2015 is the year with the most kg collected. Besides, the biggest difference in the amount of kg collected was from 2013 to 2014, with an increase of 55 tones.
We can summarise that the implementation of the RFID technology since 2014 has had really positive results in terms of the amount of organic waste collected.
In order to assess the impact of the objectives mentioned in the summary, we have developed several indicators:
1-Percentage of municipal waste collected destined to recovery and recycling treatments.
(To measure our general goal of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions in the municipality of Tiana associated with the management of municipal waste)
To measure our specific goal of improving the efficiency of the municipal waste collect service, we have developed three different indicators:
In order to measure the expected results, we will use the following indicators:
The main challenges identified were:
Some lessons learned:
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