Hernani is a densely populated industrial town in the Gipuzkoa province of Spain’s Basque Country. Back in 2002, the region had rather modest recycling rates and as the nearby landfills were reaching capacity, the regional government proposed building an incinerator. Being in an industrial area, Hernani already suffers from pollution from paper and steel mills, and the idea of adding an incinerator to it was unpalatable to many of the 20,000 inhabitants, who were willing to try any system to avoid the incinerator. And so, they started looking for alternatives and investigating the door-to-door separate collection system that was being used in Italy and some municipalities in Catalonia.

The nearby town of Usurbil was first to take up door-to-door collection, and the amount of waste sent to landfill by the 6,000 inhabitants went down from 175 tonnes a month to 25 tonnes after only six weeks. The citizens and authorities realised that if they expanded this system to the Gipuzkoa’s 760,000 inhabitants, there would be no need to build an incinerator. And they went for it!

After two months of consultation with the citizens as to where they wanted to leave their waste and when they wanted it to be picked up, the new system was implemented in Hernani in May 2010. To replace the previous system of large containers on the streets, the municipality distributed two small bins per household for organics, placed hooks to hang the bins and bags at the front of houses and buildings, established waste segregation as mandatory and launched door-to-door collection.

Citizens began to place separated organics, light packaging (in reusable bags the government sells for this purpose), paper and cardboard (in bundles, boxes or bags), and residuals (in bags) in front of their houses. For glass, the system of large containers on the streets was maintained. Each stream has a designated pick-up day: organics on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays; light packaging on Mondays and Thursdays; paper and cardboard on Tuesdays; and residuals on Saturdays.

Each bin and hook have a code that identifies the household that uses them. This allows government to monitor separation in each household. If the collector identifies a stream that does not correspond to that collection day, s/he puts a sticker with a red cross on the bin and does not collect that waste, and the household receives a notice explaining why it was not collected.

If someone misses the door-to-door collection, there are four emergency drop-off centres. There is also a drop-off site that takes bulky waste, electrical and electronic devices, and other waste not covered by the door-to-door collection free of charge. For businesses, the collection schedule is the same as for households, with an extra collection day for residuals. In rural areas, home composting is mandatory, and other streams are either collected door-to-door or taken to drop-off centres.

Under the new system, Hernani promotes home composting throughout the municipality. People can sign up for a compostingclass, request a home composting manual, and receive a compost bin for free. There is a phone line to get composting advice, and there are compost specialists who can visit households in need of assistance. People who sign up to home compost receive a 40per cent discount on the waste management fee. Moreover, a system of community composting is currently being developed for those families who don’t have gardens but want to compost.

In Hernani, the results of the experience have been staggering; in the first full month of the door-to-door collection, residual waste dropped by 80 per cent, and total waste generation decreased by 27 per cent; between 2009 and 2011, waste generated per citizen went down from 404 kilogrammes (kg) to 266kg, and residual waste to landfill went down from 270kg per person to only 37kg. And all of this without much technology; as the mayor of Hernani puts it: “Our state-of-the-art technology is the neighbours. If the neighbours separate well, there is no need to build an incinerator.”

In economic terms, the door-to-door collection system is more costly because of its labour intensity, but this is offset by the reduction of waste sent to landfill and the increase in revenue from high-quality recyclables – impurities in organic waste are only 1.5 per cent. Moreover, the system created local jobs – around one new direct job for every 1,000 inhabitants.
After the successful experience in Hernani, 35 other municipalities in the region of Gipuzkoa have announced that they will implement the door-to-door system within the next year, and more are expected to join.

The incinerator proposal has been put on hold, and the most recent update on the waste management strategy for the region aims for at least 75 per cent recycling by 2020, and promotes the proximity principle for treatment of organics, job creation and residual waste treatment in mechanical biological plants. Without the incinerator, the budget for this new strategy is just 46 per cent of the former project. More importantly, throughout this process citizens have participated and felt empowered, and are now motivated and confident on the path towards true zero waste.