The second edition of Milan Recycle City, a series of international meetings being held between 1-3 October, has begun.
Hosted by Milan municipality to demonstrate the city’s waste management processes, the three-day event will highlight how Milan currently collects more than twice as much organic waste as any other European city, through a door-to-door system.
Organisers hope it will provide examples of circular industries that ’showcase how employment, income and development can be created in harmony with the exploitation of resources’ and provide a starting point for cities to identify common goals and improve the efficiency of waste management systems.
Management of food waste
During the first day of the event, the Novamont model for the management of Milan’s food waste was presented to several municipalities in the ‘C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group’, which includes representatives from Tokyo, Hong Kong, Mosco, São Paulo, Washington and Johannesburg, amongst others.
It is claimed that the strength of the Novamont model lies in the use of bag made from bioplastic, which is biodegradable and compostable according to the European standard EN 13432.
The model is currently used in Milan, and reportedly sees more than 95 kilograms (kg) of food waste being collected per inhabitant per year
However, delegates were shown a survey by SDA Bocconi, which highlighted that if the wet waste was also collected in all Italian municipalities, 904 new jobs could be created at waste processing plants and seven million carbons of carbon dioxide emissions would be saved.
‘Compostable refuse sacks and carrier bags play a central role’
Christian Garaffa, Novamont’s Marketing Manager for Source Separation and Recycling, said: “The virtuous system implemented in Milan for the collection of organic waste, in which compostable refuse sacks and carrier bags play a central role, involves various players such as the Municipality, the waste management company, the leading Italian manufacturer of compostable bioplastics, large-scale retail operators and, more importantly, the city’s inhabitants.”
He added: “This is one of the first real cases of a circular economy in Europe.”
The next two days of the event will involve workshops on urban waste collection and processing systems, culminating in the Milan Recycle City international meeting.
Find out more about Milan’s food waste system.
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