Author(s)

CELIA DIAS-FERREIRA, ANITA NEVES, ÁLVARO BRAÑA

Abstract

Over the last 20 years solid waste has become an important issue in municipalities and counties and a problem for societies aspiring to economic, social and environmental sustainability. The new, recently approved Waste Framework Directive and Landfilling Directive have even higher targets related to municipal waste recycling and landfilling, and critical changes need to take place if European targets are to be realistically achieved. Pay-as-you-throw (PAYT) waste tariffs are an instrument that can help achieving recycling targets. PAYT works by linking the payment of a waste-collection tariff with the amount of waste discarded so that the payment increases when more waste is produced: “the more one discards, the more one pays”. This work shows the early stages of PAYT implementation in pilot scale in a municipality in Portugal. The changes carried out in the collection infrastructures are described, as well as other complementary measures that were simultaneously implemented, namely reinforcement of the collection of dry recyclables and promotion of home composting.

Keywords

municipal waste, preparing for re-use and recycling, PAYT, separate collections, waste tariffs, closed-access container, collective collection, multi-building