Household organic waste and small plants: door to door collection solves the composting dilemma for inhabitants in Milan

AMSA for the Municipality of Milan
Type of organisation or company
Country
Italy
City
Milan
Language for original content
Key Area
Project elaborated in partnership
Yes
Scope
Submitted by
European Bioplastics e.V.
Start/End date
Ongoing
Yes
Type of funding
Description

Door to Door household waste collection in Milan for food waste and small plants:

The door to door households organic waste collection plan was first introduced in November 2012 in one quarter of the city of Milan and then was extended to the whole city in June 2014. Brown bins and compostable bags are used for collection, while small kitchen bins with a special airy structure to minimize the inconvenience related to the formation of odors and liquids are used in apartments.

Collection frequency is twice a week.The aim of the separate collection of food waste is to divert this material from incineration and to send it to AD for production of biogas and good quality compost. Food waste collection sent to recycling will help also to boost recycling rate enabling Milan to achieve the EU target of 50% recycling.

The city also benefitted from the trailing phenomenon with better quality for all other separately collected fractions (paper, plastic, etc.) and increased the existing levels of customer satisfaction and system efficiency.

Main results

- Increase of recycling rate from 34,5% to 48,3%  between 2011 and 2014
- Contamination of compost with conventional plastics decreased via a quality campaign;
- Customer satisfaction survey in  2014 showed that 79% of the citizen evaluate the organic waste collection as efficient.