Smart waste management of urban biowaste can have several co-benefits: Reducing the waste ending up in landfills is essential to reduce GHG emissions. Next to this, a well-organized composting system can enhance citizen participation and helps to raise awareness/behavioural change. Using the nutrient-dense mixture produced from compost as a fertilizer also positively impacts local agriculture and helps to create a sustainable and resilient food system. It improves soil health, reduces the ecological footprint that conventional fertilizers have, and thereby contributes to greater biodiversity.

Direct connections:

• Municipal Solid Waste separation at source (district level): pay-as-throw
• Municipal Solid Waste treatment: anaerobic digestion for biogas production

Capacity building:

• Supporting municipalities to monitor resource flows in line with impact targets and measurement processes

Funding and financing:

Access to EU/national funding and innovation procurement can further incentivise the development of R&I solutions for circular design. For example Spain: Programa de incentivos a proyectos singulares de instalaciones de biogás | Idae

Social context:

Citizens, supermarkets, schools and businesses have to be aware of the benefits of compositing and separating their waste. Solely if they are informed about the benefits of composting will urban composting be effective.

Policy and regulatory/legal framework:

Municipal composting laws which accelerate large-scale urban composting and/or make composting mandatory.

Project governance and implementation modalities:

Citizen-engagement initiatives such as events, conferences, workshops, and stakeholder meetings to disseminate the project concept and activities are important to engage relevant actors, create new business opportunities, and maximise the chances of take up. Also informing the citizens when the municipal waste infrastructure has been updated (e.g. Valladolid sent to all citizens a letter informing about the new organic waste bins and provided a sticky info card to add to your home with information on recycling tips)

Infrastructure readiness:

Municipal waste infrastructure is capable to handle a newly separated stream of biowaste and have concrete outlooks of where the compost could be use/applied.

Infrastructure: Access to markets for compost products, such as farmers, landscapers, and gardeners who can use compost to improve soil quality and productivity.

Partnerships:

Collaboration and partnerships among stakeholders, including municipalities, waste management companies, composting facilities, and community organizations, to support and promote urban composting efforts.

Limited resources:

Setting up large-scale composting pick-up and processing systems can be expensive and requires commitment of resources, people and land (source).

Long duration:

Composting can take a long time depending on the materials discarded on the compost pile. Some (household) wastes hold recalcitrant compounds and low nutrients, which make their composting difficult. When such waste is added in a composting pile, they slow down the composting rate of other materials. Composting is therefore not merely collecting green waste and discarding it together to create high-quality fertilizer, it needs to be monitored properly (Source).

Public Buy-in:

Ultimately, it is consumers that must bear the efforts of waste separation. Their level of engagement and education on composting rules will determine the success of a public composting program.

• Training
• Regulations for durability, reparability and recycling in public procurement
• Awareness campaigns (e.g. Spain: DECOST raises awareness of primary schools’ students on the benefits of organic waste composting)
• Voluntary measures with stakeholders e.g. In Milan, to ensure citizen engagement, the city made sure to inform and involve citizens by designing a dedicated app. Furthermore, free vented kitchen bins were delivered to all households (source).
• Taxation/Fines: E.g. Milan applies fines to the whole building for contamination of shared bins, and through this leverages social dynamics (neighbours applying pressure on one another to use the system correctly) to encourage good behaviour (source).

Infrastructure/capacity: A potential cluttering on public streets to accommodate new locations where to place biowaste for both private citizen and businesses
Capacity: Added stress/work on businesses that must now spend time on waste separation processes.

Traffic: A new rotation of waste pickup by trucks might need to be created for both private citizen and businesses adding pressure to congested city centres

Odour and Pest: Depending on the selection of waste bins, their locations, and the frequency of their pickup, the biowaste may emit odours and attract pests such as rodents and flies.

Citizen awareness: a barrier could be represented by consumers’ inclination to dispose of waste in the easiest manner possible. People are often unaware of the meaning of compositing and/or do not take the time to separate their waste.

• https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/biodegradable-waste_en
• https://www.unsustainablemagazine.com/urban-composting-is-an-idea-whose-time-has-come/
• https://mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/sustainability/sustainability-12-04456/article_deploy/sustainability-12-04456-v2.pdf?version=1591088392
• https://www.oecd.org/environment/environment-at-a-glance/Circular-Economy-Waste-Materials-Archive-February-2020.pdf

Citizen awareness/participation;

Number of composting bins per citizen; (the amount of) smart solutions for waste management.

DNSH:

Pollution prevention and control:

Biowaste may, if not disposed properly, cause leakage, bad odours and/or nuisance from animals.

Recology: The Recology mission represents a fundamental shift from traditional waste management to resource recovery. We seek to eliminate waste by developing and discovering sustainable resource recovery practices that can be implemented globally.

Bin-e: Bin-e is an AI-based smart waste bin, designed for public places, enabling them to simplify recycling. It sorts and compresses the waste automatically, controls the fill level and processes data for convenient waste management.

Local urban compost pick-up programs.