Good practice:

WREP (Waste Recycling Project)

In 2018, a pilot was developed for the identification, interception and recycling of PVC in a specific test area identified in the territory of the Metropolitan City of Venice.
The project has been structured in 5 different actions:
Action 1: Definition of the quantities of PVC available for recycling in Italy,
Action 2: Assessment of the quantities of recycled materials
Action 3: Definition of a scheme (pilot) of collection to improve the collection and recycling of PVC waste.
Action 4: Implementation of waste management scheme that favors the matching between the demand from PVC recyclers and the offer from waste producers, in particular from C&D.
Action 5: Pilot experimentation, aimed at identifying, intercepting and recycling PVC in a specific territory.
The WREP Project wanted to involve, in addition to the competent authorities, the stakeholders belonging to the demolition and recycling industries to implement a pilot case, aimed at identifying, intercepting and recycling PVC in a specific territory. A pilot model was defined with the following characteristics:
• transferable to other national realities
• Guaranteed the traceability and certainty of the material flows of the supply chain
• Allowed an evaluation of the overall efficiency not only in terms of quantity but also in the economic terms.
The project involved 4 eco-centers, Eco-Ricicli Veritas S.r.l (collector of urban waste in PVC), 3 local companies which manage special waste from C&D.

The implementation of this BP does not require significant investment costs on the part of the Waste Collection Centers or those who demolish buildings. Very limited investments may be necessary for the training courses of the staff and the possible acquisition of the aforementioned Manual Detector

Through the involvement of Collection Centres covering a population of approximately 1.5 ml inhabitants, the results achieved are:
Quantities to be recycled: > 200 t/a (x ml inhabitants) quantities of post-consumer PVC from municipal waste collection centres sent for recycling instead of landfilling. Much higher (> 20-30,000 t/y) will be the quantities that could be recycled once applied to the construction sector.
Management and disposal costs for Collection Centres: more than 50% reduction.

The problems encountered in the implementation of this collection scheme were mostly related to the training of the personnel involved and the phasing of the needs of the collection centres and the processing company. It would be important to have the support of the national and local authorities.

The WREP project was born with the creation of a pilot scheme at an Eco-center of a municipalized company involved in the management of urban waste. Of course, this was only a first step in the desired direction, aimed at extending the pilot scheme developed at Veritas plants nationwide; the next actions of the WREP project will be to involve other municipal companies that manage urban waste in the collection and recycling of end-of-life PVC. At the same time involving more and more recyclers in this recycling chain.
This project also aims to achieve an economic advantage both for collectors and selectors and those who treat and recycle the recycled material.
These measures could be transferred to other countries mainly through the training models developed in the project which resulted successful in creating new skills and capacity building, as the knowledge to recognize the PVC from the other plastics by the technical staff.