Separate collection
Separate collection is a management system of municipal waste produced by citizens and businesses, whereby every single type of waste is selected upstream in order to be directed to a different type of disposal.
The final goal is to reduce the amount of non-separate waste bound to landfills to a minimum, which was the only way to manage waste up to a few years ago.
Indeed, separate collection is a powerful tool not only to improve the environmental quality of the areas where it is employed, but also an often underestimated source of savings: according to the latest European data the jobs created by the material recycling supply chain are 875,000, while net revenues from PET bottle recycling in Italy alone amount to 1.2 billion €.
For the moment the status of separate collection in Italy shows a country split in two: seven regions have already passed the 50% recycling threshold prescribed by the EU for 2020 (Piedmont, Lombardy, Trentino, Veneto, Friuli, Marche and Sardinia) and another three are closing in (Emilia Romagna, Valle D'Aosta and Umbria). Sicily, Calabria, Basilicata and Puglia are lagging far behind, with a percentage still south of 25% in 2014.
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