To encourage each citizen to give the best environmentally friendly behaviour towards others and the city itself to benefit, ACR+ member Cascais Ambiente has provided foreground solutions. This effort is based on three main vectors:
- Availability (of more, better, new or improved waste bins to increase proper waste placement);
- Information (transparently available to all citizens and other entities) and;
- Surveillance (throughout a dedicated team that daily assesses acts upon illegalities).
This strategy effectively mobilizes citizens for environmentally friendly behaviours on waste production and sorting and aims to be the foreground for increasing sorting and recycling, as well as garden pruning waste quality, while reducing illegal waste deposits.
Availability:
Recently, Cascais invested heavily on a wide range of waste bins, including household waste or selective streams (paper, plastic, and glass). The municipality is widely equipped with both smaller surface bins and with underground waste units with greater deposit capacity and easier to use. This investment is growing steadily and complement with mobile eco-centres which allow waste deposit for 12 different streams. These eco-centres are relocated ever week to reach all of Cascais’ residents.
Information:
Alongside this strategy, Cascais has been developing several information and awareness campaigns towards a call for action. Conscious waste sorting, correct deposition of all types of waste, and a shared responsibility in keeping a clean city, have been the focused and recurrent topics of this effort.
As a part of this, the “Small gestures” campaign was launched to make its community aware of the importance of using reusable bags.
More details in the following videos:
In the Eco-centre, 12 new recyclable streams are now available:
- Electric cables;
- Small WEEE;
- Cells and batteries;
- Light bulbs;
- Cassettes, DVD’s and CD’s;
- Toner’s and ink cartridges;
- Spray cans;
- Paint cans;
- Books and magazines;
- Corks;
- Bottle caps;
- Crockery, mirrors and non-packaging glass.
Surveillance:
An Environmental Intervention Brigade was created in 2019, a nine staff member pioneering service, whose intervention has already reduced some of the recurrent illegal waste deposits. As a positive outcome, there is a visible reduction of contaminated waste which help with our waste quantification goals.
The brigade has a parcelled workflow with the identification of the waste deposit and, when possible, the notification process which identifies the person or entity responsible for the illegal deposit, in order to reinforce the message that the recollection is free and made by the municipal services, after just a simple phone call.
All Brigade interventions are georeferenced and inserted in the CAQBI (Cascais Ambiente Business Intelligence platform) to study and gather data for a continuous improved service.
"In Cascais we are determined to give the conscious citizen all the tools to be the most environmentally active possible. This strategy is well supported by the work that Cascais Ambiente has done for the past 15 years of its existence, and we are happy to see that the citizens respond very well to this kind of stimuli, the most active even spreading the word on social media and creating buzz around our actions. We really believe that together, the municipality and the citizen, we can make the difference," commented Luís Almeida Capão, President of Cascais Ambiente. "Availability, Information and Surveillance. The tree vectors on which Cascais Ambiente supports its actions for and its interactions with the citizens. Giving them all the means to be environmentally active, giving them all the information to be environmentally conscious, and giving them all the alerts when wrong situations occur. It's a dynamic relationship, where information goes both ways, and we built trust and make actions for a better future,” he continued.