The complaints from the residents of Sant Andreu de Palomar preceded the slowdown in the expansion to more areas of Barcelona of the door-to-door system, in which Garbage must be left at the entrance of the house and in deposits authorized to be collected. The unrest also forced an increase in the removal of bags taken out on the street and a reversal of the procedure limited to three days a week to dispose of organic waste in the neighborhood. The government of Mayor Ada Colau introduced changes like these at the end of 2021 to redirect a bumpy start, but garbage left poorly on the street has also been growing. In just one year, the waste thrown outside the spaces reserved for this purpose has shot up around 66% in Sant Andreuaccording to the data of the consistory required by EL PERIÓDICO.
The city council admits that the amount of waste abandoned in the streets where the Door to Door rules has grown from just over 3 tonnes removed per week in early 2022 to around 5 tonnes waste at the end of the year. The increase means that the cleaning brigade recently found more waste scattered outside the portals and smart containers and organic matter mailboxes installed in Sant Andreu, where the bags and buckets marked with a code must be thrown. The identification allows rewarding those who recycle the most with bonuses. In any case, the Catalan Authority for the Protection of Dades has imposed two reprimands on the consistory for three violations in the deployment of the collection model.
The municipal executive explains that the amount of garbage thrown where it is not allowed to do so “has been fluctuating & rdquor; throughout 2022 in the neighborhood where individualized collection is applied. “Now it is stagnating on about five tons & rdquor;estimates the local government, which maintains that there is no single reason that motivates why this part of the discharges has grown. In any case, he does not venture possible causes. It does emphasize that the case of Sant Andreu “It is in line with what is happening in the city as a whole& rdquor; after lifting the restrictions to contain the covid.
In this sense, the city council argues that “waste collection has increased by about 4%& rdquor; within the perimeter of Door to Door. “It coincides with the global data from Barcelona where, after the pandemic and post-pandemic period, the generation of waste has also increased & rdquor ;, he argues.
“He’s wearing people down”
For the neighborhood movement critical of Door to Door, the increase in litter scattered on public roads reveals weaknesses in the system, such as the imposition of a schedule that defines when each type of waste should be thrown away. “It is exhausting people and it is not being followed massively & rdquor;observes Claudia Casanova, a member of the Sant Andreu Sud Neighborhood Association.
On the other hand, the Department of Ecological Transition -headed by Eloi Badia- emphasizes that the Door to Door has unraveled the stagnant recycling rate and raised it to 78% in Sant Andréu. It is “the highest of any neighborhood in Barcelona,” he praises.
“The idyllic version of the town hall contrasts with the day-to-day reality we live in,” opposes Casanova, who believes that “they worked badly and quickly, without extensively debating the system, with one dysfunction after another that makes it highly imperfect “.”We now have dangerous streets for the blind and people with reduced mobility -holds-. Several of them have told us that they have fallen on more than one occasion, because there is no control over where the bags are left.”
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The upturn in spills came to the fore in a recent follow-up committee on Door-to-door, which is attended by neighborhood entities. The city council indicates that, on this matter and others, the committee did not request corrective measures, “beyond some communicative reinforcement action & rdquor ;, it adds. “They may seem acceptable, but five tons of abandoned garbage have a huge impact on the quality of life in the neighborhood& rdquor ;, warns Casanova. Thus, alert that “the comings and goings & rdquor; of the government on the selective removal to test in Sant Andreu “have done damage to the cause of the separation of waste & rdquor ;.
For his part, the local executive stresses that the proportion of garbage that is now recovered in Sant Andreu “allows us to comply with what is established by European regulations”, which requires reaching 65% of recycled waste in 2035. The waste that ends up in the wrong way in the organic matter deposits has risen from 2.3% in the individual buckets used until the end of 2021 to an average of 3.4 %, although the city council points out that it remains far from the 20% limit required by law. Data Protection has urged the city council to assess the risks of intrusion into privacy that it detects, such as the possibility that people outside the cleaning teams pry into bags left on the street or that identification codes are deciphered.