G. Do you think that the lifestyle of the inhabitants of your town or city reflects behavior that is in line with the

concept of sustainable development? In your opinion, what should be improved?

Marco Volpi

IE APPLICATION ESSAY

I live in Tortona, a small town in the North-west of Italy with 28.500 inhabitants.

MY HOMETOWN

Let’s see how the lifestyle of its population is coherent with the concept of sustainable development.

I decided to focus on the WASTE MANAGEMENT PROBLEM

THE WASTE ISSUE

Like in all towns in Italy, Tortona’s level of domestic solid waste is increasing and there is a serious problem of oversaturation in our receptive structures.

Half of the domestic solid rubbish (0.98 kg/per person/a day) is thrown everyday in generic waste containers.

Then it is transported to the municipal landfill and stays there for years until it decomposes.

So our landfill is filled with tons of toxic material that will need years to be disposed of.

This is why we need a solution to this problem.

A SUSTAINABLE AND CLEAN SOLUTION

Waste sorting is the process by which waste is separated into different elements.

It begins by dividing rubbish into paper, plastic, glass and organic.

This are then collected and transported to material recovery facilities or mechanical biological treatment plants.

The solution that we are trying to adopt in Tortona is to increase the percentage of WASTE SORTING

This method makes possible the recycle of a lot of waste that can be recovered, transformed and re-used.

SEPARATE COLLECTION OF WASTE

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Tortona 44.1 48.1 49.4 57.2 49.4 50.4

Italian aver-age

27.3 30.6 33.6 35.5 37.7 39.9

EU stan-dards

40 45 50 50 60 65

5254565

% of waste sorting1

1: data from www.anci.it

This graphic illustrates the data of the differentiate collection of waste in Tortona in the last 6 years, compared to the Italian average and to the European standards that we should follow.

MY VISIT TO TORTONA WASTE TREATMENT PLANT

I personally visited the waste treatment plant of my hometown to comprehend what it means to recuperate domestic waste. The centre I visited is a specialized plant that treats recyclable material to then sell it.

This is the right place to see how our inhabitants divide their rubbish and to understand the opportunities that a good waste management has.

After this check, the garbage is compressed and then sold to societies that complete the recycling process.

So, this is an efficient way to dispose our waste: it is economically convenient for the community and more sustainable, especially if compared with landfills and incinerators.

THE PROCESS

All the collected waste arrives here and every type of rubbish is taken to a different platform, where it is manually operated and checked to see if there are some impurities.

THE BUG

The principal problem in this process is that the quality of separation of litter, that is done by the population at home, is not really efficient.

After my visit in this plant, I realised that Tortona’s inhabitants must be educated and informed about waste sorting.

We should try to explain how important it is to separate litter the correct way.

SO THERE IS A PROBLEM: SOLUTIONS

As we have seen, the problem of waste sorting is that people do not separate litter the proper way, thus increasing costs and making recycled product’s quality worse.

In my opinion, the public administration should educate its population, promoting an authentic zero waste strategy, that focuses on preventing—through changes in design, production, and consumption—and recovering of waste.

Another solution is a door to-door collection system.

A strong dialogue with the citizens is necessary to explain what are their tasks.

Information: info points should be created and brochures should be distributed during town fairs and events.

IMPORTANT POINTS:

Schools’ important role: environmental education should be thought to school’s students.

A GOOD EXAMPLE TO FOLLOW: door-to-door in Ponte nelle Alpi

Ponte nelle Alpi is a small town with 8500 inhabitants and is the best Italian municipality regarding door-to-door collection system.

Ponte nelle Alpi started in 2007 a complete revolution in the way of collecting rubbish: the municipality distributed four small bins per household, removed the large containers from the streets, established waste separation as mandatory, and launched door-to-door collection.

The results have been surprising.

A GOOD EXAMPLE TO FOLLOW: door-to-door in Ponte nelle Alpi

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

% 23.8 85.8 88.1 89.3 90.1 90.2

15

25

35

45

55

65

75

85

95

% of waste sorting2

2: data from “Comune Ponte nelle Alpi”.

Beginning of door-to-door system

With the beginning of the door-to-door system Ponte nelle Alpi reached these incredible results in a few years:-from 23,8% of waste sorting in 2007 to 90,2% in 2012!

A GOOD EXAMPLE TO FOLLOW: door-to-door in Ponte nelle Alpi

OTHER GOOD RESULTS:

-in 2007 the costs of disposal was 50% of the total cost of waste management services-in 2012 it decreased to 4,8%.

Disposal costs have decreased by 92% in just 5 years

This lead to a decrease of fixed costs and to a major investment in new occupation: 10 new employees were hired between 2008 and 2012.

Moreover, users now have to pay less for service and the more they separate the less they pay.

A WIND OF CHANGE

Tortona’s target is to get to a zero-waste philosophy: it means reducing what we discard in landfills and incinerators to a minimum.

As we have seen with Ponte nelle Alpi, door-to-door is a concrete solution.

• A modern new facility has just been completed by Tortona’s administration. It is a structure that allows a complete recovery of organic material: the method is called “Anaerobic digestion” and its aim is to produce energy using waste.

The collaboration of population is fundamental: we must learn more about waste sorting and sustainable development to be fully collaborative

A waste management with this aim should provide effective policies, regulations, incentives, and financing structures to support these systems.

GOOD NEWS• Tortona begun, in 2013, door-to-door collection.