At the head of the WINPOL project is EMULSA, the municipal company that has directly managed household waste collection in the Spanish municipality of Gijón (Spain) since 1978. Already active in promoting the waste hierarchy and developing a sustainable waste management strategy for the city since several years, the company is striving to move further towards circular economy by inserting more smart technologies and policies in its Municipal Waste Management Plan 2018-2022, thanks to its participation in WINPOL.
In particular, EMULSA will be gathering ideas on the use of new information technologies to improve waste minimisation, selective collection or recycling rates and the implementation in the city of Gijón of a waste generation payment system, studying the possibility of developing “pay-as-you-throw” policies or individual incentivised pricing.
The use of smart technologies is not something new for EMULSA – already in place is an operational assistance system which controls the waste trucks’ routes and the time when the containers are picked up or washed thereby providing important information to improve performances. This is coupled with a precise monitoring of waste disposal using a card-reader opening system placed on street containers. EMULSA has further started to install in the collection trucks a weighing container system to control the weight of the collected waste and not to exceed the allowed limits of the vehicle.
Through the WINPOL project EMULSA will tap into existing good practices to further develop and improve these smart technologies and policies applied on its territory.
