Italy is currently among the best-performing EU member states in recycling consistent amounts of municipal solid waste (MSW). After a constant improvement of its performance, around 63% of all MSW in 2020 was separately collected and sent to recycling facilities; in the same year, the average MSW production per inhabitant was 488 kg/inhabitant, one of the lowest production rates of this century.
A country diverting food waste to recycling
Biowaste plays a pivotal role in a modern MSW management system that aims to maximise recycling and to reduce the amount of residual waste generated. When biowaste is collected separately and thus diverted from disposal, the fermentability of residual waste is reduced, as is the need for intensive treatments prior to final disposal options; moreover, since biowaste represents a very significant fraction of MSW, lower disposal capacities are needed for residual waste.
Italian municipalities have committed systematically to the separate collection of biowaste by setting up:
- a scheme for garden and park waste (green waste) relying on bring sites or pay-as-you-throw (PAYT) collections at the doorstep, and
- a frequent and possibly doorstep collection scheme for food waste that takes advantage of compostable liners to facilitate sorting by households; this allows a large variety of food waste to be collected, including cooked food residues, dairy products, meat and fish.
It is worth noting that, thanks to the particular organisation of food-waste collection, the quantities that remain inside the residual waste fraction are often below 10% (f.m.) and, at present, biowaste accounts for almost 40% of all MSW collected separately in Italy and sent to (material) recycling, which is actually a driver of the overall MSW separate collection.
Updated official data[1] shows that, in 2020, 7.2 million tonnes of biowaste (equivalent to 121 kg per capita) were collected by Italian municipalities, 72% of which was food waste. Food-waste collection has undergone a very significant improvement considering that, between 2010 and 2020 (see Figure 1), separate collection has doubled, while green waste increased by less than 20%.
[1] Source: Italian Environment Agency of the Ministry of Environment (ISPRA)