Pay by Weight, Italian Style

“Paga Quanto Butti”

Following the recent Pay By Weight fiasco here in Ireland, it might be worthwhile for the powers that be to look at the city of Parma in Italy, where they successfully have implemented Pay By Weight, or as the Italians would say “Paga Quanto Butti” (Pay As You Throw). Parma has a population of approximately 200,000 and while it is famous for its ham and cheese, it is also now claiming fame as a city heading toward Zero Waste.  In 2011 Parma was Italy’s largest producer of residual waste at 283kg per capita and thanks to political will and a strategy based on minimising waste, this has been reduced to just over 120kg per capita and is expected to go below 100kg before the end of 2016. This was achieved through the co operation of all stake holders, the local authorities, the residents and the waste service providers, who coincidentally also owned an incinerator and were dealing with Parma’s Municipal Solid Waste. This transition has resulted in the creation of nearly 50 extra jobs and a yearly saving of over €3.5m in waste disposal costs. Lateral thinking seems to have been the order of the day in Parma, with waste collections in the inner city being performed at night, with more frequent waste collections of bio waste and residual waste in the inner city, with buckets being used for biowaste and bags being used for residual waste. In the residential areas wheelie bins were used for biowaste with buckets being used for the residual waste, collections were done in the mornings and they are less frequent than in the inner city. Parma also introduced an Environmental Brigade to police and monitor the implementation of the waste policy . The Parma Pay By Weight or  Pay As You Throw charges consist of a flat service charge based on the number of occupants and the square meters of the household and a per lift charge for residual waste (€0.7 per bag, €1.4 per bucket and €4.2 per wheelie bin). The result has been that the collections of residual waste have dropped with only 25{b050ebef00e2b6e935b95b021e9f55f4ab20ffeed47f29e2aa25a2081fec5bc8} of residents putting out their residual waste at every collection. There has also been a significant improvement in the quality of waste collected, allowing for quality recycling, an essential pre-condition for a circular economy and ZERO WASTE. Seems simple enough?