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Spain has the recycling of municipal waste as a pending issue. The European directives and the Waste Law set the horizon for 2020 that 50% of urban waste be prepared for reuse and recycling, but currently the figure

barely reaches 35%

. Waste management is inefficient and experts point to two reasons: the lack of selective collection of garbage, especially organic matter, and the lack of fees to encourage or penalize separation and recycling. To overcome these two obstacles, the sector is offering solutions related to mobile technology, big data and even robotization, the objective of which is to change the habits of citizens when it comes to disposing of garbage.

Two of the main tools for selective collection are

door-to-door

, applied for years in communities such as Euskadi, or the smart container, which is being imposed and which already has good results in municipalities such as San Sebastián, Gijón, Pamplona or the region of La Garrotxa in Catalonia, where the experience has been multiplying in recent months. Although the key remains educating for separation at home, these tools effectively change habits.

What are these

smart containers

and how do they work

? They are those that are on public roads but oblige citizens to identify themselves in order to deposit their waste. They do it through an assigned electronic card or a mobile phone application. And that is where infinite possibilities open up to optimize waste management. Each city council designs its own experience, starting with choosing which fractions to close and monitor in the containers, following the collection routes and ending with the stimulus or penalty system applied as part of the new habits campaigns.

The ID&A company has been developing intelligent urban waste management equipment for 24 years both in Spain and in Italy and, although the localities themselves usually choose their model, they have two basic preferences tested: closure of all fractions (as in La Garrotxa) or closure of organic matter and rest (as in Pamplona). In both cases, the opening of the waste container is usually limited to two days a week.

The system even makes it possible to

identify peak hours when neighbors dump their garbage

. "In one region it was detected that citizens deposited the garbage between 8 and 11 in the morning, contrary to the belief that it was a nighttime custom," explains the manager in Spain of ID&A, José Sáiz. In this way, the routes of the collection trucks can be optimized, both in time and in route. And it is that, through the data of the register, you can also assign neighbors to a certain island of specific containers, select exclusive containers for hospitality or adapt their permits to the situation they live. "If there is a family with a baby, the remaining fraction is not limited to two days a week, because they have to throw away the diapers and wipes",exemplified.

One of the keys is the

loss of anonymity

of neighbors in the face of the administration, which reverts to an improvement in habits that makes these systems reach a selective collection percentage higher than 60% in the same month of implementation.

But there is more, and it has to do with the second of the problems that weigh down the management: by having the user identified, positive discrimination mechanisms can be established that encourage separation and recycling.

"We have been offered options that range from a discount on the garbage rate to accumulate points to access advantages in local businesses," explains Sáiz.

There are prizes, but there can also be 'penalties' in the form of increases in the receipt for those users who generate more waste, for example, rest or who do not use the system properly.

Robot pickup

An innovative system in waste management under development are robots that collect containers. It is a project financed by the Valencian Innovation Agency that is being developed by four Valencian companies -Robotnik Automation, Fivecomm and Industrias Alegre- and that will put the La Pinada de Paterna neighborhood to the test in two months, one of the first sustainable urbanizations in Spain. Following the experience of robots that deliver packages in China, they have developed a version with 5G technology capable of moving individual containers of

up to 180 liters

to a consolidation center on the outskirts of the urbanization. The objective is twofold: that the neighbor does not have to travel to a community container island loaded with various fractions and avoid the transfer of garbage trucks through the urbanization, thus reducing CO2 emissions and noise.

"The containers have sensors that warn when they are full and the robot picks them up. It moves through the pedestrian areas and cycle lanes of the urbanization at 11 km / h and could collect the waste of 1,000 inhabitants in five hours," he explains to El Mundo

Luca Cinti

, project coordinator.

The pilot robot will undergo the first tests in two months and will begin by collecting the paper and cardboard fractions.

"But, using big data, we could adapt it to carry out an even more selective collection, establishing routes, days and hours in which it would remove the containers of a certain fraction, for example," adds Cinti.

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