News
Municipality of Lisbon
The Municipal Waste Management Directorate of the Municipality of Lisbon is a Public Local Organism responsible for the management of Lisbon City territory. The main responsibilities of the directorate are to:
- support the administration of the municipality in the design, definition and implementation of strategies and integrated waste management policies;
- manage hazardous waste generated within the activities of the municipality;
- manage the waste and the respective deposition systems, as well as of urban cleaning services;
- collect and transport urban waste;
- develop strategies and implement innovative technologies in the municipality, with the aim of reducing, reuse and recycling urban waste.
Victor Vieira, Urban Waste Management Municipal Director, gives us more information on its activities regarding sustainable resource management.
ACR+: What are the main challenges on your territory in the field of sustainable resource management?
V.V.: In 2016 Lisbon City Council approved publically the Municipal Waste Management Plan. This Plan based this strategic vision in the following concepts:
- Sustainable and clean city;
- Waste = Resource;
- Circular Economy: Waste Re-insertion in Life Cycle, Reuse & Recycling;
- Minimising waste generation.
The strategic goals defined in the Plan are:
- to improve waste prevention;
- net enlargement of the waste reception points;
- to increase the recycling amounts and to improve material quality.
ACR+: What are your priorities in sustainable resource management for the upcoming years?
V.V: Since 2003 the City of Lisbon is working in the direction of finding the appropriate systems of waste collection harmonized with the morphology and urban characteristics of the city. The results obtained, during this period of time, show us a continuous increment in the quantities and in the quality of the selective material collected. In the present our focus are in taking advantage of new technology in the facilitation of the management of the activity, in costs reduction and in the increment of the citizen comfort. For that, the city is investing in the acquisition of a new waste management system that, in an integrated manner, will increase the efficiency of the service provided and, in the medium term, allows start the implementation of a “Pay as you Throw” system in City. Concerning with the waste reduction Lisbon City is also working for in the next years several infrastructures with the aim of contribute for that (namely: Implement two repair cafés, circular bazars between other capacities).
ACR+: Could you share with us one of your main achievements this year?
V.V: This year, the Lisbon City Council has been installing sensors in the collective bins of the capital to control when they are full. The new devices have already been placed in one 150 of glass bins and at least 200 underground containers.
The use of the sensors will, in the first phase, enable the removal services to control and manage the equipment and the routes better, thus making them quickly removal. The analysis of the information collected by the sensors allows better adjustments in the frequencies of collection in each location. In the office, dynamic circuits are daily generated in order to avoid unnecessary movement, which translates into a decrease in fuel costs and less carbon emissions associated with the waste removal activity.
In a second phase, it will also be possible for citizens to check the filling level of the bins in their area of residence through a mobile application (APP) accessible to the IOS and Android platforms. The citizen thus has the opportunity to choose the most suitable container to deposit his waste avoiding unnecessary routes and improper depositions in its exterior.
To discover more about the Municipality of Lisbon you can visit www.cm-lisboa.pt or contact Victor Vieira, Urban Waste Management Municipal Director, vitor.vieira@cm-lisboa.pt.
