Waste management in insular areas: A Pay-As-You-Throw system in Funchal

Abstract

The issue of municipal waste is regarded as one of the biggest environmental problems worldwide given its uncontrolled growth. Efficient waste management is an important step towards an energy and material sustainable society. This problem is particularly serious in insular regions due to logistic difficulties. As a result, municipalities need to find effective measures to balance their waste management systems as the inherent costs of the service are high and the charges applied are inefficient. One possible solution to achieve efficient waste management is the application of a Pay-As-You-Throw (PAYT) system, which considers the amount of waste produced by each agent, making her/him responsible for reducing waste production. Furthermore, increases in recycling rates decrease the need to obtain materials from virgin resources, which leads to lower energy consumption. Based on real data, we propose a reformulation of the old incentive mechanisms in Funchal, Portugal, replacing them by the application of a PAYT system to the non-domestic sector, namely to hotel enterprises. Our simulation results for a representative hotel shows that the PAYT system provides important tariff reductions, which can go from 47% to 70%, when unsorted waste decreases according to the goals set by the European Union of achieving a percentage of recyclable waste on total waste of 55% in 2025, 60% in 2030 and 65% in 2035. Hence, the system is a good incentive to the increase in sorted waste, contributing to a more sustainable waste management mechanism.