Waste fee based on CO2 generation

Topic addressed and relevance for the territory

With Resolution No. 50 of 09/30/2020, the Municipality of Terre Roveresche approved the new Regulations for the Discipline of the Waste Tax (TARIP), which will be applied starting January 1, 2021, based for the first time in the country on CO2 production. Utilities, in the year 2021, will not only pay a significant portion of the fee in a punctual mode, but this will be determined based on the amount of CO2 produced by each utility.

The calculation of the on-time fee involves accounting for utilities' deliveries on multiple types of waste, initially undifferentiated, organic and paper, and within a few months also plastic, glass and others. Once the quantities of each type of waste expressed in kilograms are derived, appropriate emission factors are multiplied to these to determine the corresponding CO2 equivalent output associated with each utility.

Public partners/third sector/companies

Development of methodology for calculating the CO2 produced by the utilities (called Carbon WastePrint and validated by RINA Service in accordance with UNI EN ISO 14064-2:2012) and coordination Ing. Andrea Valentini of Studio Associato Wastelab and Dr. Luca Belfiore of the firm Altraleonia Srl. Support for the experimentation through firm Giunko srl, which manages the Junker App, now available to all citizens of the municipality and which will allow each user to monitor their own contributions. Firm CO.SE.A Consortium, which has provided support to the Authority in the preparation of the new Regulations and the Operate Foundation's group of experts on punctual pricing (www.operate.it).

Qualitative and/or quantitative objectives

The environmental and economic benefits of this innovative method are many. For example, users who carry out home composting, by not delivering organic to the waste system, will see immediate economic returns in their bills, without the municipality being obliged to carry out costly and complex controls. All actions related to the world of reuse, re-use, or against food waste will find immediate economic satisfaction in the rate computation. Commercial users, who may have economic difficulties due to fewer activities or temporary closures, will see the fee reduced due to lower deliveries. And many other examples could be given. In addition, utilities will have a greater awareness of what action in their waste management has resulted in lower impacts and, therefore, greater economic benefits, also facilitating improved behavior over time.

Qualitative and/or quantitative objectives

The Municipality of Terre Roveresche, with a view to implementing a green economy policy and protecting the environment, has activated on an experimental basis a system of accounting for the emptying of residual dry waste, which has been accounted for since May 2018, of wet waste and paper, which are accounted for since May 2019, through the distribution of baskets equipped with RFID TAGs that allow the verification of the deliveries made by individual users and specifically:

• by Council Resolution No. 63 of 09-22-2017, it was established the activation of the service of emptying of residual dry waste and application of the punctual tariff to domestic and non-domestic tariffs and the purchase of the necessary instrumental and technological equipment (containers with TAG RFID, TAG reading systems and initialization, association and management costs) for the accounting of the emptying of residual dry waste and thus for the application of punctual tariffs;
• by resolution of the Council no. 24 of 18-02-2019 it was decided to approve as guidelines the activation in the territory of the certified methodology "Carbon WastePrint" for the determination of the environmental impact produced by each user within the cycle of municipal solid waste management with the application of bonuses to virtuous users and the purchase of the instrumental and technological equipment necessary for the extension of the accounting of emptyings also to the fractions UMIDO - CER 200108 and PAPER AND CARDBOARD - CER 200101 and the supply of the application for mobile devices necessary for the development of the experimentation and for the communication and information to the users of the activation of the initiative and the results obtained from the experimentation;
• By Council Resolution no. 26 of 11-02-2020 having as its object was established the transition to a punctual tariff through the application of the certified Carbon WastePrint system for the determination of the environmental impact associated with each user within the cycle of municipal solid waste management in the territory of the municipality and therefore the purchase of the instrumental and technological equipment necessary for the extension of the accounting of emptying also to the fractions PLASTICS - CER 150102 and GLASS - CER 150107 and the implementation of a new municipal regulation that takes into account the Carbon WastePrint procedure, that complies with the characteristics of the Municipality and the Service, the legislative dictate and the application of the punctual tariff (or tax or fee);
• with Council Resolution No. 50 of 30/09/2020, the new TARIP Regulations based, for the first time in Italy, on CO2 production were approved;
• with City Council Resolution No. 47 of July 5, 2021, the determination of the 2021 tariffs was approved, the first under the new system, which provides for a fixed fee of 28.94%, a calculated variable fee (relating to all waste not subject to accounting) of 37.26% and a measured variable fee, i.e., determined on the basis of the CO 2 eq produced by each user of 33.80%.

Community engagement and communication

100% of the utilities in the area have been informed and involved in all stages of the process and in a particularly direct and interactive way through the application developed by Giunko Srl i.e. Junker App that, thanks also to a special experimentation that allowed to estimate the CO2 emissions potentially reduced through the efficiency of the collection service, has managed to interest and involve the utilities in the area through a "challenge" to the greatest reduction of CO2 emissions by asking the utilities to communicate in time the need or not to collect their waste in compliance with the collection calendar, thus allowing the manager to optimize the collection time. It is therefore planned to further involve the population with further developments of the App that will allow each utility to know, at each instant, its position in terms of CO2 production/savings.

Results achieved and effectiveness of the project

For the year 2019 a reduction of 2,352 tons of CO2 was certified while in 2020 a reduction of 2,901 was certified, allowing the municipality to obtain as many CO2 credits that, once sold, will be returned to the most virtuous users in the municipality on the basis of additional TARIP discount.

In addition, to better understand the effects of the new tariff, a study was carried out that simulates the application of the tariff with the classical method (i.e., measuring only undifferentiated waste) comparing the results with the new approved method. The study shows that Terre Roveresche's method is:

Nello studio si evidenzia come il metodo di Terre Roveresche risulta essere:

1. simpler, as it succeeds in encompassing more activities by utilities with only one parameter
2. more effective, as it has a significantly higher economic leverage than the classic system (the most virtuous utilities will be able to obtain a discount of up to 24 percent, while with the classic system the maximum reduction is 8 percent);
3. but above all, more equitable, because it has been pointed out that the application of the classical method, which measures only one type of waste (precisely undifferentiated waste), is not sufficiently representative of utility behavior and may risk rewarding non-virtuous utilities and penalizing virtuous ones instead; this risk has been shown to be real for one in five utilities.

Still it was found that measuring more types of waste provides greater benefits for the utilities defined as critical, i.e., both households with a large number of constituents and non-households with strong fluctuations in waste production with peaks especially in organic waste production (restaurants, bars, canteens, etc.). All this is due to the representativeness of the measured waste; that is, while in the 1990s the percentage of undifferentiated waste accounted for 80-90% of the waste produced and therefore its measurement was sufficient to represent the behavior of the utilities, today undifferentiated waste covers less than 30% and, therefore, is not only no longer adequate, but also results in serious errors in the allocation of rates to the utilities. It is therefore necessary to adjust the point tariff systems according to models that better represent the complex behavior of the utilities; failing this, the risk is that the point tariff, in addition to becoming an ineffective tool with respect to the objectives it would like to achieve, would quickly lose credibility on the part of the utilities, with obvious serious repercussions on the entire waste management system.