As the demonstration sites are about to be launched next spring, a very comprehensive report on how to maximise the benefits of such decentralised biowaste management was released, focusing on communication activities and incentives targeting households, restaurants, and catering services in order to improve biowaste management: food waste reduction and source separation of bio-waste for organic recovery.
The report focuses on three main target audiences: the households, the restaurants, and the collective catering services such as school canteens. For the two last categories, it is important to note that two main categories of target audiences are considered: the staff preparing and serving the meals, and the guests eating them. This report, in the first place, looks at existing guidelines and good practices that can be replicated for the implementation of DECISIVE systems. While these examined practices primarily focus on ensuring that the DECISIVE units would receive sufficient quantities of source-separated bio-waste with a proper quality, they also tackles food waste, especially the reduction of food wastage, and looks into potential promotion and public acceptance of the DECISIVE treatment units. Finally, they present benchmarking elements on the biowaste generation and composition, as well as the potential impact of several communication activities and incentives on biowaste management. The documented good practices allow highlighting the effectiveness of several incentives and communication instruments. It appears that good practices generally rely on a combination of instruments rather than one single instrument. However, the effectiveness of legal obligation, and more importantly of PAYT systems must be highlighted; they can be regarded as among the most effective drivers behind the implementation of source separation of biowaste.
Communication activities and incentives mainly aim to enable the change of behaviours of waste producers so that they lower their food waste production and sort their biowaste in a proper way. To do so, they are designed to inform the waste producers on the proper behaviours, provide to them convenient ways to do so, and motivate them by providing evidences on the benefits of the required change of behaviours, by penalising bad behaviours or by rewarding positive ones. Incentives cover a wide range of action: the quality of the collection service offered, the pre-collection and collection material proposed to waste producers, the controls made to ensure a proper sorting associated with responses, financial instruments, and legal obligation. Likewise, communication activities are very diverse, ranging from very general advertisement campaigns to direct engagement of the population through workshops and training sessions.
The report details various general recommendations as well as more specific ones targeting the two demonstration sites regarding the communication activities, key messages, and communication materials to be produced in order to involve waste producers and promote the system to external stakeholders. These recommendations will provide a basis for the DECISIVE partners in charge of implementing the case studies to shape their communication strategy.
Download the report here.
