Organic waste collection and composting
The Emilia Romagna Region has supported, in recent days, the Waste Management Plan and for the Remediation of Polluted Areas 2022-2027 (PRRB) and launched the approval procedure requesting comments from all neighboring interested parties including the Republic of San Marine. The document provides for the strengthening of the percentage of waste separation and various other actions aimed at the circular economy. The Republic of San Marino also wants to do its part: “implementing separate collection to reach 70% of differentiated waste is a duty and a decision that cannot be postponed”. Due to the continuous delays and indecisions of politics, we have a percentage of differentiated waste that is around 50% and a park of bins that is inadequate and indecent to carry out its function, a situation detected every day by the local press, with the publication of photographs. . The condition of the road bins is under the eyes of all, located in non-strategic, makeshift and positions encountered at intersections or supedes.Moreover, in many cases, the ecological island is not complete forcing people to others in other points to deliver their separate waste.
The Autonomous State Company for Public Services reported by proposing various solutions for implementing separate waste collection, with a door-to-door system and ecological islands, identifying costs and benefits for each of them. Door-to-door collection is certainly more effective because it makes people responsible, but it is also the most expensive because it requires considerable manpower and more means of collection, while street collection with bins guarantees more flexibility to users and is cheaper but on the other hand people. they are inclined to be less attentive and participate in correctly sorting waste.
In this regard, the Secretary of State for the Territory and the Environment, Stefano Canti, and the Secretary of State for Work and Relations with the AASS, Teodoro Lonfernini, inform citizens that the Congress of State with resolution no. .30 of 13 December 2021 ordered the conferment of a professional assignment to the company Ecogeo Srl, for the study and drafting of the project of the integrated waste management service for the identification of the best strategy aimed at the collection and treatment system. waste in the Republic of San Marino in terms of efficiency, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness and the consequent drafting of the new waste management plan. The assignment provides for the verification of the integrated waste management service starting from the analysis of the projects and reports drawn up by the AASS on the separate collection system. The analysis will also concern the direct management of the collection through the staff and means of the Autonomous State Company for Public Services.
In the Castello di Borgo Maggiore, bins have been positioned for the collection of organic waste but, due to lack of information and communication, the collection of organic waste is not working. About 3 kg of organic waste should be collected per person per week while only 0.5 kg is being collected. This means that most of the organic waste is still thrown into the bin together with the unsorted waste, which in turn is sent to the incinerator.
The Italian and European regulations require that organic waste be separated and treated close to the place of production. This is the basis of the agreement with the Emilia-Romagna Region that allows us to deliver our waste to the incinerator. In essence, continue to deliver urban waste to Italian plants only if in quantity and free of organic waste that we will have to manage in a plant within the territory.
To this end, the State Congress with its own Resolution No. 24 of 31 August 2021, approved the composting plant project at the San Giovanni site and now the AASS must proceed at full speed with the construction works of the plant consisting of existing yards and construction of new yards as per the project definitively approved by the Commission for Territorial Policies (CPT) on 4 October 2018. to improve their fertility, but above all to recover about 50% of the waste produced within the San Marino territory (35% organic + 15% paper) in compliance with the circular economy. This will guarantee us for the future the losses of unsorted waste and other waste that do not find a destination within the San Marino territory due to the lack of recovery plants. In addition, with the aforementioned resolution, the Congress of State ordered the conferment of the professional assignment to Prof. Giulio Ferrari for the study and drafting of the experimental project on the use of quality compost in the organic cultivation of vegetable species for horticulture as well as for the preparation of a final report of the experimental results in a format and content suitable for the participation of the Republic of San Marino in the International Convention on Waste Management – ISWA World Congress 2022 – which will be held from 21 to 23 September 2022 in Singapore.
In addition, in the weeks, it has purchased new bins to replace the broken and no longer functional ones, around 30 complete ecological islands will be located on the territory of the Castello di Borgo Maggiore for the collection of all waste, positioning them with safety and comfort criteria for users. , based on the project already drawn up by AASS and AASLP. Information and training meetings will be organized in schools and with citizens, in the meantime there will be a period of observation and data collection that will provide a contribution to the final choice of the waste collection system. If collection with ecological islands works, it can be implemented in the rest of the territory, otherwise if the collection of organic waste does not reach high percentages of separate collection, it will necessarily be necessary to start a home collection.
The goal is to differentiate organic waste, with the street collection method (with a lower cost), or with the home collection method (with a higher cost). There is an alternative to differentiate organic waste, namely the autonomous and domestic management of organic waste through the use of the composter. In the future, with the activation of the punctual tariff or application of the “polluter pays” principle, the practice of domestic composting will certainly be encouraged and rewarded, so it is a good practice useful for the environment but also for the domestic economy.
Stefano Canti (Secretary of State for the Territory and the Environment) and Teodoro Lonfernini (Secretary of State for Labor and Relations with AASS): “Each of us can do our part for the Secret of public services and ensure that they are effective and efficient . Each resident can contribute to improving the public administration of our country “.
Press release
State Secretariat for the Territory and the Environment and State Secretariat for Labor and Relations with AASS