Porto boosts selective waste collection and circularity joined by European partners

Representatives of the seven European cities that are a part of CityLoops, gathered for two days in Porto, to share some results of the project that aims to increase circularity in materials usage, focusing on construction residues and organic matter demolition. Besides the population, the Municipality has been promoting the involvement of the social and tourist sectors in these actions.

“The Municipality of Porto wants to take on an increasingly active role in recovering and valuing residual materials”, the City Hall’s vice-mayor ensured, in the opening session of the General Assembly of CityLoops.

Filipe Araújo highlighted this as the challenge that led to city to join the project, next to the Dutch Apeldoorn, Finnish Mikkeli, Norwegian Bodø, Spanish Sevilla and Danish Høje-Taastrup and Roskilde. “Through compost, organic waste can be transformed in an ideal fertiliser for soil, giving back nutrients to the earth so that they may be reintegrated in the cycle of plant production”, the councillor for Environment and Climate Transition underlined.

Joined by partners such as Porto Ambiente, LIPOR and 2GO Consulting, Porto has been investing in five essential actions: the selective collection of organic residues in buildings, next to 15 thousand families, using 120 bins with access control; community compost that serves 180 families; the combat to food waste through models of circularity in the social and tourism sectors awarding them with the Certification Coração Verde; promoting the project FoodLoop to projects with impact in the food chain value; certifying green spaces and signing the protocol Zero Desperdício for the distribution of food in social institutions.

The vice-mayor recalled that Porto has been implementing, since 2017, the Roadmap for Circular Economy, that has guided the city with the goal “of reducing losses and accelerating transformation”. In 2019, joined by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the city has started to apply circular economy to the food sector.

However, Filipe Araújo considers that “we are aware that a lack of information still exists” and, therefore, “we continue to act in the places that we know are critical”. Among the projects regarding the combat to food waste, there are also the Feira Local de Produtos Orgânicos, urban gardens, individual composits, “Embrulha”, the net of Restaurantes Solidários, the Good Food Hub and the door-to-door collection of organic waste from commercial establishments.

The goal, the vice-mayor admits, will be of “continuing to expand the selective collection of organic residues and the net of community compost islands, to increase the number of adhering entities to the models of circularity, to implement the Certificação de Espaços Verdes in new places, and to increase the number of entities involved in the net of food donations”.