Cascais Ambiente

Cascais Ambiente is the brand name of the services provided by EMAC - Cascais Municipal Environment Company, E.M., S.A., which share capital is fully owned by the Municipality of Cascais.

In addition to the services of urban cleaning and waste collection, Cascais Ambiente is also responsible for the management of urban green spaces, playground and recreation parks of the Municipality, as well as the management of natural resources and the coastline.Luís Capão, Member of the Executive Board of Cascais Ambiente, gives us more information on the Municipality’s activities regarding sustainable resource management.

ACR+: What are the priorities of Cascais Ambiente when developing its waste management strategy?

L.C.: Cascais Ambiente positions itself as a municipal company that bets on innovative solutions to improve its environmental performance. Contributing to the improvement of the Municipality’s sustainability is guiding our actions. In our waste management strategy we include the logic of maximizing efficiency through Smart Waste Management and aim at reducing CO2 emissions, for example by limiting the numbers of kilometers traveled. Although Cascais is leading the way in terms of recycling rates, compared to European performances we still have some way to go.

We are also recovering natural spaces by turning them into playgrounds and promote the conservation of nature, for example with urban gardens, to maintain the biodiversity of the Municipality. All this aims at improving the quality of life of the residents.

ACR+: Are there some specific actions that you would like to implement in 2017 to increase your performances?

L.C.: Until 2016 we only used to collect household waste from about half of the Municipality of Cascais while a private company was in charge of the remaining part. In 2017 we will start to manage the household collection of all Cascais. It means that we will have to adapt all our services to this new reality. Thus, we will have to take the daily collection of 4000 containers and raise their collection to our quality of service criteria.

In addition, we will significantly improve our service of bulky and green waste collection by implementing a technological solution that will allow our customers to better follow the requests made to these services, through text messages. We give a high priority to a good communication with our citizens.

Another of our actions for 2017 is the implementation of the European project Waste4think (PAYT) project.

The European WASTE4Think project, led by the DeustoTech institute of technology at the University of Deusto, seeking to design solutions based on the use of information and communication technologies that would enable the improvement of all waste management stages, adopting a global approach and particularly focusing on citizen participation in order to build more sustainable, eco-friendly cities.

The project kicked off in June 2016 and is being undertaken by an international consortium comprising 4 public agencies, 3 research centers, 7 SMEs, 2 large enterprises, a business cluster and an NGO. The project has duration of three and a half years and a budget of €9 million.

The main objective of this project is to pave the way for zero-waste systems by setting a waste data management methodology in different urban environments thanks to the validation and integration of a set of eco-innovative solutions. The solutions will be based on the needs for waste management improvement in a set of demonstrative pilots in Europe and will use information and communication technologies to enhance citizen participation.

ACR+: You referred several time to the notion of “innovation”, did you implement other activities that could be considered innovative?

L.C.: Innovation has indeed been an indelible mark of the growth of Cascais Ambiente company, visible in several sides of our activity. As an example, we implemented technologic and information systems that allow us to optimize the waste management collection system in order to reduce fuel consumption (saving 40000 liters in 2016) and the need for maintenance operations.

In addition, we manage to reduce our gas emissions of approximately 100 tons of CO2 last year. Financially speaking, this project contributed to a cost saving of €700 000 in 2016, out of a total of €7 000 000 yearly budget.

Two major factors served as driving forces to implement the project.

First the vision that waste management policies are based on strategies to ensure the preservation of natural resources and minimize negative impacts on public health and environment. Second, the cost of waste collection and transportation represents the largest cost share in the global waste management system. These two factors created the need for a greater efficiency and competitiveness that led to the development of a decision-making system based on reliable real-time data collection.

We also applied innovative technologies for collecting data from the waste collection routes which are monitored in real-time. The waste containers are equipped with tags (transponder chips) and fill level sensors, while the vehicles are fitted with onboard computers and GPS tracking.

The system also provides conversion of the processed data into performance indicators. These are then used to facilitate decision-making for the optimization of available resources. With this type of management, the number of routes, for the selective collection, was reduced from 14 to 8 routes per day. With real-time data we are now able to shape the operations of waste collection according to a constantly changing reality.

To discover more about Cascais Ambiente you can visit www.cascaisambiente.pt (in Portugese) or contact Mr. Luís Capão, Member of the Executive Board of Cascais Ambiente (luis.capao@cascaisambiente.pt).