«There are only two ways to be more aware and improve waste management: pay or receive rewards for doing it well»

The new garbage rate -baptized as ‘the Tasazo’- has generated controversy in many Spanish town councils. Because they have been forced to rebuild their municipal accounts and, above all, because they have been forced to comply with the unpopular task of imposing a new payment on citizens.

But, apart from calculations and formulas to achieve a proportional charge for the expense of managing the waste that each person generates, the legislative change puts the focus on an issue that has traditionally had little press and less pedagogy in Spain: what we do with the waste we generate and, above all, what we should do to avoid damaging the environment.

Now that the issue touches the accounts of many Spaniards, there is no one better than Pilar Tur, one of the country’s greatest experts in waste treatment, to clear up doubts. The technical director of the Treatment Area of ​​Urbaser, a multinational that has 58 municipal waste treatment plants in Spain and 49 industrial waste, explains why it is important to be aware of what it costs to treat garbage and what the challenges are, as a country, we must face to abandon the landfill abuse that Europe so demands that we correct.

-What the new garbage rate seeks is for us to separate more and better organic waste in our homes. What is currently the presence of this organic fraction in treatment plants?

-Official data dates from 2021 and reveals that 22.15 million tons of municipal waste have been managed in our country, of which 78% has been collected in the rest fraction (the bucket in which everything is mixed) and 22%, divided into the different fractions into which we separate the waste at source. These are cardboard paper (7%), glass (4.1%), plastic containers (4.1%) and, finally, 6.6% are biowaste, which is what is popularly called matter. organic. The majority of waste in Spain is still collected mixed in the fraction called ‘remainder’. That’s the reality.

-What is the main origin of this 6% of biowaste?

-It is organic waste from large generators, such as restaurants and kitchens, as well as from the maintenance of parks and gardens.

-Do households still contribute little?

-The legislation did not introduce until 2024 the obligation that all organic matter -biowaste- had to be collected separately at source. This means the implementation of that fifth container – the brown one – in all those areas where it was not yet there, which were the majority. By implementing this new container we hope that this fraction will increase because the composition of the waste we generate contains between 45 and 48% organic matter. If we were able to segregate it at source, it would greatly facilitate everything that involves subsequent treatment, apart from the quality of what is recovered.

-But the brown container is not new in many Spanish towns. Shouldn’t it have already borne some fruit?

-Containers are being implemented in many cases. I think that not enough time has passed yet to be able to have feedback on how many are being collected globally. We do have data from some autonomous community that collected it segregated at source. If in Spain this percentage is 6%, in those pioneer communities it is 15% after several years of implementation.

-Would the ideal be to reach the 45-48% that we already throw into the bucket mixed with the rest?

-We will never get to that; I am aware. It is true that many citizens are beginning to collaborate with this container, but the truth is that we have been separating at different origins for many years and we all know that every change takes its own process. It takes a lot of communication.

-Why is it so important to separate the organic matter.

-I would say that it is the most abundant part of municipal waste and if we are able to segregate it at source, we will be able to improve all subsequent waste management. It’s not that we at home have to make an effort to make others work less, as they say. This is not so.

-Why is what is separated at origin valuable then?

-What is initially separated is called compost and can be used – complying with regulations, of course – as an organic amendment to improve soils. But if it is obtained by separating it into the rest fraction in the treatment plants, what is obtained is called ‘stabilized material’ and, although today it is counted in the recycling figures, it cannot be applied as a material for the improvement of the land (in agriculture and gardens, for example), but it must be managed directly as waste. It could also emphasize that it is not only necessary to segregate at source, but to do it well, with a maximum of inappropriate waste, that is, other waste that should not go in that bucket. That is, if I collect organic matter and it is mixed with papers, plastics, among others, above 15%, even if it has been separated and placed in the brown container, it will no longer be considered organic matter by regulation.

-Is its use as compost the only option?

-No, it goes further. In the plants we design a process, first of all, of mechanical classification to separate the aforementioned improper ones. Once the organic fraction is obtained, a process called anaerobic digestion can be applied, which rapidly decomposes the organic matter into two: biogas and digestate. Compost is obtained from this last element, if it comes from selective organic collection. With biogas, in most existing facilities, what is done is introduced as fuel to produce electrical energy, but methane can also be ‘cleaned’ and segregated, which can be directly injected into the natural gas network. With this we would use our own waste for our consumption and we would be using a fuel that, instead of being of fossil origin, would be a fuel of biodegradable origin.

-Where does that 40% of organic matter normally end up when we do not separate it at home?

-Right now, we try to classify by mechanical means the waste that arrives mixed to segregate those fractions that are usable. But what is obtained in this way, by law, is not considered an organic amendment -compost-, but rather what is called stabilized biomaterial, which is marketed through a waste manager to be used in those places where it is allowed based on its composition. For the purposes of percentages of recycled waste, it now counts as compost. But starting in January 2027, only that which is already separated at origin can be considered as such. So if we do not start diverting the organic fraction to this fifth container we will also lose that part of recycling that now counts to us.

-We would be even further away from fulfilling the commitments made with the European Union.

-According to these, in 2020 we should have reached 50% recycling. We have not been able to, since in 2021 we were at 42.2%. We have 8% of the way to go to meet the goal from a year ago. In the year 2025, the amount of waste that we have to landfill has to be a maximum of 40% and recycling, 55%. In 2030, recycling would have to be 60% and in 2035 65%. And in turn, what ends up in landfills has to decrease: in 2030, a maximum of 20% and in 2035, 10%. If we are not able to segregate our waste at source, it will end up in the landfill and we will not meet the European objectives, with the consequences that this may have for Spain. I understand that the Spanish Government will transfer those autonomous communities that are not complying with the consequences of this non-compliance.

-Now that the cost of treating separated or mixed waste with the new rate is settled. Is the latter much more expensive?

-It is not so much a question of whether it is more expensive or less, but of how efficient it is. From the sector, what we ask, first, is a payment per generation, that is, that we pay for what we really generate from waste. Today, most municipalities collect the expense together with the IBI and many of us still do not know how much we pay for the management of our waste and we are not aware of what happens with this waste. It seems that we have a magic bucket at the door of our house where we deposit the waste and it disappears. And we don’t care about what happens next. Everyone knows what they spend on the telephone but not on the treatment of their waste. As citizens we must be much more aware of our impact on the planet in terms of the way we consume and the way we manage it. We have to be able to differentiate the cost of this management. This does not mean that they necessarily have to go up. What they have to do is separate it from other concepts and identify it.

-The great challenge is how to charge proportionally.

-Exactly: it is the great challenge that politicians have now. That is, how am I able to attribute a cost to each of my citizens. More people live in larger homes and generate more waste. Technology is advancing enormously and perhaps the time will come when, with a barcode, they will be able to apply to each of us the amount of waste we generate. Because if they are going to charge me, who has the five fractions at home, the same as my neighbor who mixes everything because he does not want to collaborate with the system, it is completely inefficient and is penalizing good behavior. In Europe there are several examples where technology is applied.

-Caring for the environment is the ultimate goal of these measures. What happens when the organic reaches the landfill?

-All European regulations were developed thinking that the most harmful waste to deposit in landfills is biodegradable waste. Because when they decompose they generate biogas, which is mainly made up of CO2 and methane. One ton of this emitted into the atmosphere is equivalent to 25 tons of CO2. And this contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. In 2020, waste was responsible for 4.3% of Spain’s emissions. So we have the task of minimizing this deposit and prioritizing, in that order, recycling after treatment and energy recovery.

-In addition to environmental damage, there is also an economic one, because from 2022 a tax is applied to the landfill.

-Indeed, the landfill tax arises precisely to try to discourage landfilling, which has a greater impact. It is important that we are all aware and aligned, because waste managers are not the ones who have the last word. It is necessary to build infrastructure for each fraction of waste separated at source. Material classification and recovery infrastructures must be built and energy recovery infrastructures must be built for their rejections to minimize this deposit in landfills. It is essential.

-And how do you see the so-called ‘tasazo’ being a cause for political confrontation?

-I am not a politician, but what I am clear about is that the way to minimize the generation of waste and improve its management is for us all to be aware of what we generate. And there are only two ways to do it: paying for it or receiving rewards and incentives for doing it well. There are formulas already implemented in some municipalities to reduce this rate.