On the podium of world cities with over a million inhabitants: results are presented at the Milano Recycle City workshop. From the 30th June organic waste will be rolled out across the city. In May Milan reached 50% separate waste collection. The latest data from Amsa bears testament to the further positive growth in the city’s separate collection, which in 2012 was 36.7% With these results Milan tops the podium as one of the world best cities with over a million inhabitants. Councillor for Transport and the Environment Pierfrancesco Maran announced the results this morning at Fabbrica del Vapore at the opening of Milano Recycle City, the first international workshop on recycling urban waste organised by the Municipality of Milan in collaboration with Amsa, Conai (National Packaging Consortium) and Novamont. Organic waste The introduction of door-to-door collection of organic waste has had a particularly positive impact on good practices. The initiative started in November 2012 and will be rolled out over the whole city from the 30th June. Monitoring this area of waste (from January 2013 to January 2014) has highlighted the high quality of the samples, with an average of just 4.27% non-compostable content. Packaging Its historic excellence in collecting packaging waste helped Milan reach this important separate collection goal: between January and April 2014 21,743 tonnes of paper, 6.946 of cardboard, 21.928 of glass, 13.892 tonnes of plastic and metal and 1.853 tonnes of wood were collected. The results of Conai System-Consortiums activity were also presented at today’s workshop, showing how, for the industrial sector of recycling and recovery of packaging waste, the circular economy is already a consolidated reality. In Italy over the past 15 years, the benefits on the environment translate into 350 billion KWh saved, 125 million tonnes of CO2 avoided and 100 landfills not being filled. All this because just under 105 million tonnes of packaging waste have been recovered. Contributing to this result, the chain involves 1,400 companies and a total of 37,000 staff in the collection and packaging waste recycling department, with a total turnover of 9.5 billion euros. Finally, from 1997 to today, for each euro invested in the Conai system, the national system has seen profits of 3 billion euros. According to research commissioned to Althesys, the 4.1 billion euros invested by syndicated companies in the recovery of packaging in six materials has produced 15.2 billion of euros of profits for the country. The collection system The quality of waste collection in Milan has improved owing to an integrated system that today counts 55,000 collection points, 11 recycling points for bulky and dangerous waste (5 in the city) and 1 CAM (mobile recycling centre), about 250 street banks for paper and glass and 37,000 street bins(including green areas). The workshop ‘Milano Recycle City’ marks the start of a period of comparison and cooperation with cities belonging to different networks and associations such as C40, ISWA International and ACR+, with the goal of improving the efficiency of waste management and promoting in a concrete way the concept of the circular economy, which transforms waste into a resource. Institutions representing the Netherlands and the cities of New York, Berlin, Göteborg and Lubiana all took part in the event. The results of a benchmarking study were presented, conducted by Amsa with collaboration from the Scuola Agraria of Parco di Monza, Ars Ambiente and Novamont. A comparison with the biggest cities in Europe has shown that since the implementation of organic waste collection across the city, Milan, with 90kg per inhabitant per year, collects the highest volume of organic waste per capita.