Municipal waste management system

There are over 3,300,000 people living in the ECOP4RC Consortium area. And we each produce an average of 1.29 kilos of waste per day (2011).

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Sistema de gestió de residus municipals To get rid of all this waste, we use several systems, amongst which there are bins and containers for paper, glass, light packaging, organic material and refuse, and municipal depots.
Once it's been collected by the municipalities, all waste is treated. Glass and paper are sent directly to the recycling companies and are used for making new objects. Packaging is sent to sorting plants, where it's classified by kind of material and later recycled too.
Organic matter undergoes mechanical-biological treatment, in plants such as Eco4arc of the Barcelona metropolitan area, other ecoparks or composting plants. All those plants recover the recyclable material that wasn't properly sorted by citizens, make compost from the organic matter and sometimes even get energy from it.
Refuse is also treated by ecoparks. As in the case of organic matter, recyclable material not correctly sorted at home is recovered, organic matter is bio-stabilized and sometimes it's used to produce energy.
Anything that can't be used – residue – is either burned up to make energy, or taken to restore spoiled landscapes and dumped in a way that's safe for the environment.

Jerarquia de gestió de residusThose treatments are decided and applied according to the waste management hierarchy.
That is, putting any recovery treatment first, and only later applying any disposal. Thus the importance of plants such as Ecoparc 4 of the Barcelona metropolitan area, that allow to recover materials even if we citizens haven't sorted our waste correctly.

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