The EU-funded project CIRCULAR BIOCARBON organised its second City Interest Group webinar, highlighting good practices to improve the quality of separately collected bio-waste. The webinar aimed to showcase why bio-waste collection should aim for higher levels of purity, what cities are doing to collect bio-waste and how they can improve that.

The key presentations during the webinar were given by Patrizio Salice, Researcher New Materials and Technologies at project partner Novamont, and Michele Giavini, a waste expert for the Italian Composting and Biogas Association. In addition the Basque province of Gipuzkoa (Spain), as well as the cities of Mikkeli (Finland) and Kozani (Greece), provided testimonials highlighting their targets and goals, main challenges, and key projects and initiatives to improve the collection of bio-waste.

Both main presentations highlighted Milan (Italy) as a leading European city in (bio-)waste collection. The city is for example able to collect 103 kg per year per inhabitant of organic waste, diverting it from landfills and turning it into compost. The city is offering its citizens a door-to-door service for organic fraction collection and makes use of compostable bioplastic bags.

The City Interest Group is part of the CIRCULAR BIOCARBON replication activities, aiming to foster exploitation of results outside of the project, share knowledge and build capacity. Members of the group are able to closely follow project developments and learn from the CIRCULAR BIOCARBON approach and the technical expertise of the consortium partners.

Interested in joining the City Interest Group? Email simon.gresset@iclei.org

The webinar can be viewed here.