Summary of the City of São Paulo CCAC MSW Exchange Visit to the City of Copenhagen

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1 Trip Report Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) MSW Initiative City exchange (mentoring) programme between the City of São Paulo and the City of Copenhagen Exchange visit to Copenhagen, November 16 th - 19 th, 2015 Travelling Delegation: José Antônio Bacchim President, AMLURB, the City of Sao Paulo Waste Management Authority; Julia Moreno Lara Advisor, AMLURB, the City of Sao Paulo Waste Management Authority; Gabriela Otero - Coordinator, ABRELPE, the Brazilian Association of Public Cleansing and Waste Management Companies, National Member of ISWA in Brazil. Overview After the visit of the City of Copenhagen delegation to São Paulo in October, it was time that the Brazilian city delegation travelled to its mentoring city. José Antonio Bacchim and Julia Moreno Lara, representing AMLURB, and Gabriela Otero, representing ABRELPE, conducted the second visit of the City Exchange Programme between the City of Copenhagen (mentoring) and the City of São Paulo (mentored) under the CCAC MSW Initiative. The main purpose of the visit was to learn from the great experience of Copenhagen in order to support Sao Paulo s implementation of the actions set out in its Waste Masterplan, Decree 54,991/2014, which provides the guidelines and goals for the municipal solid waste management in the City of Sao Paulo. Having Copenhagen as a mentor city also helps Sao Paulo to consolidate the climate change concerns in its agenda, especially in the waste sector, by supporting and complementing the activities of the Work Plan Project of the CCAC implemented by ISWA since October Summary of the City of São Paulo CCAC MSW Exchange Visit to the City of Copenhagen The program designed by the representatives of the Technical and Environmental Administration of the City of Copenhagen was based on what they experienced in their visit to São Paulo in the previous month. The main idea was to offer the opportunity to observe how an integrated waste management system is in practice by visiting some of its vital components: planning, collection schemes, communication strategies, treatment facilities and its final products. To do so, from November 16th to 19th the Sao Paulo delegation went through an intense learning process and exchange of information through the following technical visits and meetings with waste managers, operators and experts in communication: Meeting with the representatives of the Sustainability Unit and Waste Management Operations and Procurement Unit of the Technical and Environmental Administration, City of Copenhagen; Site visit at the RGS90 Recycling Facility for construction and demolition waste, composting and contaminated soil treatment; Site visit at the AV Miljo Landfill; Guided observation of different properties with different collection systems and vehicles; Site visit at the Assistens Cemetery, which is also a park; 1

2 Site visit at the Gartnergade Recycling Hub, a small civic amenity centre where reuse is promoted; Workshop on Waste Management and Recycling Communication; Site visit at the Amager Resource Centre, which is an Intermunicipal Waste Treatment Company; Site Visit at the Biovaekst treatment plant for biowaste; Site visit to a larger Civic Amenity Centre; Wrap-up meeting with the representatives of the City of Copenhagen and the Brazilian Embassy. Meeting details: Monday, November 16, 2015 Welcome and introduction to Copenhagen Ms. Merete Kristoffersen City of Copenhagen Mr. Jens Purup City of Copenhagen Ms. Adriana Caznoch Kurten Brazilian Embassy in Denmark Ms. Louise Siv Ebbesen Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark Ms. Joana Neves - Copenhagen Resource Institute 2

3 The opening meeting was held at one of the buildings where the Technical and Environmental Administration of City of Copenhagen is located, and was hosted by the delegation that visited São Paulo. In order to assist with translations and support present and future activities, representatives from other three institutions participated in the meeting: the Brazilian Embassy in Denmark, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and the Copenhagen Resource Institute. Bjorn Appelqvist, from the City of Copenhagen, presented the city s profile and some general data from the municipal solid waste management: Demographics, with around 569,000 inhabitants (2013) living in 285,000 households; Government organizational structure; Legal framework at national and local levels, showing the division of responsibilities regarding waste issues; The technological routes for waste management, mainly oriented to recover materials for recycling and energy; Ways of providing and charging for urban cleaning and solid waste management services; The planning and implementation of bike lanes through the city. Site visit at the RGS90 Recycling Facility 3

4 Prepared by Ms. Joana Neves - Copenhagen Resource Institute Mr. Jon From, RGS90 RGS90 is one of Scandinavia s largest environmental companies, having 22 treatment plants in Denmark alone. Its core business is the recycling of soils and waste, and can be divided in the following areas: Receiving, categorising, treatment and disposal of contaminated soil; Receiving and processing bottom ash from incineration; Receiving and processing waste from demolition and construction activities; Sales of recycled waste; Sales of natural materials; Consultancy regarding environmental issues. The manager that hosted the delegation stated that around 97% of the total amount received by the company in Denmark is recycled into materials to be used in the construction industry and for energy production. At the plant, which has 20 acres of paved areas, RGS90 receives and treats around 400,000 tons/year of bottom ashes, construction and demolition waste and contaminated soils, all managed by 60 employees. Highlights from some of the materials received: Contaminated soil: Every cubic meter received is analyzed by different laboratories in order to identify the substances and establish the type of treatment, resulting in 80,000 tons treated/year. Compost: The compost is produced from the green waste disposed in piles, turned each 14 days for 8-10 months and then mixed with soil and sold for landscaping. The plant produces 40,000 tons of compost per year. Site visit at the AV Miljo Landfill Ms. Joana Neves - Copenhagen Resource Institute Mr. Per Wellendorph AV Miljo Landfill 4

5 The delegation was hosted by the manager of the landfill, who prepared a short presentation to introduce the facility with general data: The landfill is owned by the two public companies which also operate two large incineration plants: Vestforbraending (owned by 19 municipalities) and Amager (owned by 5 municipalities); It has 400,000 m², was inaugurated in 1989 and is managed by 7 employees; The landfill receives 70,000 tons of residues per year, of which 10,000 tons from civic amenity centers; 20,000 tons of industrial waste. 40,000 tons of construction and demolition waste Due to its current capacity, the landfill would close in two years, but its administration started some mining works in the old cells to gain more space and recover the energy from the removed waste. 5

6 Introduction to the Copenhagen Waste Prepared by Mr. Jens Borregaard - City of Copenhagen To last activity of the first day took place in the same venue of the first meeting and its content was focused on presenting the waste management system of Copenhagen. The most interesting information is observed as below: The city generates around 700 tons/day or 1.3 kg/inh/day; Its topography is mostly flat ground which facilitates collection schemes, and 92% of the population live in apartments; The transition of the waste disposal from dumpsites to incineration plants happened in the 1960 s in order to mitigate the environmental impacts and provide district heating and electricity. In the 1990 s another transition started and continues until now: from incineration plants to recycling of both dry and organic waste which is now seen as most valuable for the industry and capable of also generating electricity and heat. Different fees for different ways of treating waste: o Landfilling = 50 /t o Incineration = 45 /t. o Recycling = 0 /t, There is no fee charged from the population for the dry recyclables source separated. The city has 10 districts, each with a specific contract of 5 years with service providers providing the collection of the residues and dry recyclables. The contract can be renewed twice, each time for one year. The city owns, jointly with another municipalities, two resource centres with incineration plants: o Amager Resource Centre, owned by 5 municipalities but Copenhagen owns 80% of its stocks. ARC is also responsible for managing the civic amenity centres in the city. o Vestforbraender: owned by 19 municipalities. Also the landfills in the country are mostly, if not totally, publicly owned to ensure the monitoring after closure; The tenders for the sale of the dry recyclables guarantee 2-year contracts and a good price; There are 14 civic amenity centres in the city, with different sizes and maximum capacity of 30 fractions of waste. Besides these facilities, the municipality provides door-to-door collection: 7 fractions for apartment buildings and 5 fractions for single houses; The city s impressive Resource and Waste Management Plan 2018 establishes the following highlighted goals, based on data from 2010: o 20% less waste to incineration; o 45% of household waste to be recycled. o 25,000 tons of food waste for biogas production. 6

7 Tuesday, November 17, 2015 Prepared by Introduction to waste collection in the City pf Copenhagen Mr. Kennet Petersen City of Copenhagen Through the guided observation of the collection, the representatives of São Paulo could learn about the different schemes. There are containers distributed alongside the neighbourhood streets for paper; cardboard; residues; packaging; glass; where people can make the correct disposal. Each container has an underground capacity of 1.2 m³ and illustrations of what to dispose. There are also smaller containers for piles and batteries. The delegation could also enter in the buildings to observe the organization and location of the set of bins for different fractions; the amounts collected of each fraction vary from one building to another. For example, some residents are separating better the dry recyclables and generating less residues, what impacts positively in the waste fee charged every year for the building. The buildings also have some kind of shelter to dispose the bulky waste, lamps, hazardous waste and materials that can be reused by the municipality or the residents. Regarding the trucks, the fleet is being renewed and it was possible to observe the new models. They are natural gas fuelled and the compacting system is moved by electricity, minimising noises and carbon emissions. 7

8 Visit at the Assistens Cemetery Mr. Martin Lunde Handen City of Copenhagen This municipal cemetery has around 300 years and is one of the most famous in the city, where the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen is buried. Two interesting aspects were observed through this visit: the concept of turning a cemetery into a public park with a large and well preserved green area; and the composting project that is running to recycle the green waste from the park/cemetery. The compost produced is applied there as well as donated to interested citizens. 8

9 Site visit at the Gartnergade Recycling Hub 9

10 Near the cemetery there is a civic amenity centre, the Gartnergade Recycling Hub, where it was possible to observe the exchange-shelves that promotes the reuse of materials among the residents of the area. Books, clothes, CDs, shoes and all kinds of things can be left there to be collected and reused by someone else. Workshop on Waste Management and Recycling Communication Ms. Malene Krogh - City of Copenhagen Ms. Anne Chrintine Eskildsen - City of Copenhagen Ms. Ane Kollerup Nielsen - City of Copenhagen Mr. Flemmin Sjolin Bauer - City of Copenhagen The workshop addressed two special targets for a communication strategy: the schools and the public in general, the Copenhageners. In the first part, the city s strategic projects with schools were introduced: 1) The Waste Hero (for kids from 3-6 years old), where someone from the municipality visits this target group dressed like a hero and promotes games and tasks about waste; 2) The Resource Activists (for 7-15 years old), mostly involving school technical staff and research activities inside classroom; 3) The Zero Waste School (all ages), searches for a showcase where waste prevention, waste handling and integration in curriculum are promoted; 4) Children Conference on Waste and Materials Resources (biannual) all schools are invited to show their initiatives on waste management; 5) External learning sites, like incineration plants, recycling facilities, nature-schools. 6) Meet the Dustman, when the workers from the waste sector visit the schools with their equipment and trucks. 10

11 In the second part, the communication experts from the City of Copenhagen presented the whole municipal strategy to communicate with and stimulate citizens to make source separation in their households. The campaign Recycling is Gold won the ISWA Communication Award 2013, held its main activities from September 2012 to spring 2014, and demanded four communication experts. The goal: help Copenhagen to recycle at least 45% of MSW by 2018, as stated in its Resource and Waste Management Plan By now, 28% has already been achieved. The municipality has a budget of around 500,000 for communication activities, what was crucial to develop and distribute many educational materials: folders, sticks, t-shirts, mailing, online platform for Q&A and interactive games, apps, public events and even a cinema spot. The next steps are to develop communication campaigns targeting the residents of single houses. Wednesday, November 18, 2015 Site Visit at the ARC Mrs. Susane Lindeneg City of Copenhagen Ms. Joana Neves - Copenhagen Resource Institute 11

12 The visit to the ARC site was divided in three parts: first, the delegation met the small scale transfer station for source-separated rigid plastics (100 tons/month), metals (80 tons/month) and small WEEE (200 tons/semester) from households in the City of Copenhagen. The station is open from Monday to Friday and has two employees. A guided tour through the incineration plant took place and where it was possible to observe the bunkers where, every day, 400 trucks dispose residues generated by 50,000 companies and 500,000 inhabitants. The operational capacity is 400,000 tons/year of residues with their composition being 20% of plastics and 40% of biowaste, besides which 30,000 tons of roots are imported annually to increase the calorific value of the materials that enter the four combustion chambers working 24 hours per day. The electricity and heat generated in the process cover the demand of 50,000 households for electricity and 100,000 households for heating. The plant was open in the 1970 s and has 200 employees. 12

13 Finally, the group could visit the REnescience pilot project for enzymatic treatment of residual waste; since it is a pilot under tests, it was not possible to make photos. The process accelerates the biodegradation of the organic fraction of the residual waste and separates hard plastics and metals, which can be commercialized. The liquid resulting from the biodegradation process can feed an AD plant and generate biogas. Site Visit at the BioVaekst treatment plant for biowaste Ms. Susane Lindeneg City of Copenhagen Mr. Christian Christensen, BioVaekst 13

14 The facility is 15 years old and is owned by two public companies and one private company. With a capacity of 100 tons/day, the plant receives MSW from 12 municipalities, 7 of them collecting separately organics from households. Copenhagen also started a trial of separate collection of organics in two of its districts and sends them to this plant. The treatment process mixes different fractions of waste (residual, organic source separated, mature compost and green waste) and encloses the materials in modules, where the materials are irrigated and stay there for some weeks. After that, the materials are piled to complete the composting process resulting in mature compost, which is now being donated to local farmers. The leachate generated in the modules is collected and sent to a bio-digester which produces biogas. 14

15 Thursday, November 19, 2015 Site visit at a Civic Amenity Centre 15

16 Another kind of civic amenity centre was visited by the delegation. This centre is larger and receives approximately 36 different waste fractions, mainly from construction and demolition activities. Small commercial users of this facility must be registered and pay an annual fee according to the volume they bring to the facility. For example, a registered commercial generator is not allowed to bring more than the capacity of a small truck at a time. Citizens do not pay fees to bring their waste. The facility runs with two employees and a monitoring system with cameras. During the visit it was possible to observe many people bringing different types of waste and some of them asked for assistance from the employees. Besides the containers, the centre has one shelter for hazardous waste and another for small WEEE and bulky waste. To implement this kind of facility in the middle of the urban area, it is necessary to develop environmental studies and ask for a municipal permission, what is not always easy and simple. Wrap-up session Ms. Merete Kristoffersen City of Copenhagen Mr. Jens Purup City of Copenhagen Ms. Adriana Caznoch Kurten Brazilian Embassy in Denmark 16

17 The wrap up meeting started with some words from the representatives of São Paulo, about what were the lessons learnt through the visit: It was very interesting to realise that all the treatment facilities are publicly owned and mostly by a group of municipalities, ensuring scale, quality, monitoring and capacity for high investments. The decentralisation and short term contracts for municipal waste collection in each district seems to work very well even in a small city like Copenhagen with 10 districts; Sao Paulo has 96 districts and 2 concession contracts for the whole MSW. The search for improvement in all parts of the waste management system, and ensuring that everyone involved is aware of the rules and the goals. The transition from waste to resource impacts not only the treatment alternatives (from dumpsites-landfill/incineration-recycling of dry and organic waste) and the development of technologies, but mainly people s mind-set. The communication strategies for schools and citizens are admirable, very creative and effective as evidenced by the numbers achieved on recycling. The implementation/expansion of bike lanes throughout the city, with 75% of the Copenhageners using bikes as a transport. This is a very important initiative with many positive impacts for the society Sao Paulo is starting this challenge and the delegation learned a lot in these four days. There are two things that the City of São Paulo would like to share with Copenhagen: The home composting program called Composta São Paulo which, in one year, distributed 2,000 vermicomposting boxes achieving around 10,000 citizens that became active part of the waste management system. The results can be found at Waste management in areas of difficult access, such as the favelas, which demand specific equipment for collection. Why and where to continue with the City Exchange Program between Copenhagen and São Paulo? São Paulo, Brazil, and Copenhagen, Denmark, are very different cities in many aspects: geography, economy, culture, size of their territories and population. But one strong thing they have in common: the willingness to improve their municipal solid waste management towards a sustainable system, and to make all the efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change in their own cities and the world. This is why both cities want to continue with the mentorship relationship under the CCAC MSW Initiative, ensuring even better results for the Work Plan Project under implementation by ISWA until September Both cities learned tremendously as can be shown in the report. From the 17

18 side of São Paulo, it was crucial to realise in practice how an integrated waste management system runs, how to develop a communication strategy, how citizens walk to the amenity centres and dispose correctly the waste; and how important it is totalk to managers, operators, drivers, experts and other employees of the sector, to hear about the challenges and results of their daily work. This experience gave to Sao Paulo more inspiration and energy to continue pursuing the improvement of its system and to add more value to the work that has been done by ISWA. In this sense, São Paulo would like to continue learning from Copenhagen s experience in the following areas: Decentralised and short term contract models; Monitoring the terms and conditions of the contracts; Waste fee calculation; Local strategies for implementing pilot projects; Technologies on AD and composting, considering: technologies previously tried; advantages of the current strategy/technology Communication strategies for schools; Communication strategies for public campaigns. 18