Expo 2015, the Milan “Recycle City” Committee is born, will make the city’s excellence known

18 November 2016
Categoria:  News e-Gazette
Tag: expo 2015, Milano, Milan

Seize the opportunity provided by Expo to promote Milan as global centre of excellence in the area of municipal waste management. This is one of the objectives set by the Milan “Recycle City” Committee, which was officially formed in the last few days and whose members include the Italian Composting and Biogas Association (C.I.C), Amsa, Comieco and Novamont. Separate waste collection in the Lombardy capital has reached record levels. In 2013, Milan completed the extension of the service for the collection of organic fraction to all households across the territory. Since then, more than 1.3 million people regularly separate kitchen waste, as well. This result delivered Milan the world record for metropolitan areas with the largest number of residents served by the collection of moist, surpassing even San Francisco, which has about 830mila inhabitants. The performance then went far above the forecasts. In each area of Milan, the collection system went fully operational within 3-4 weeks, totalling between 90-92kg of waste collected per inhabitant per year, sending almost 120,000 t/year for recovery. In the wake of this increase, the overall percentage of separate waste collection in Milan came to 50.4% by the end of 2014, the highest rate among all Italian metropolitan centres. However, although separate waste in Milan has already reached high levels, especially for organic waste, Committee members confide in the fact that there is still room for improvement. For this, one of the objectives of the Working Group is to also carry out studies and research to further improve the quantity and quality of separate waste collection. Everything in the framework of international promotion of the so-called “Milan Model”, starting with Expo 2015.