A city without waste.

The Italian town of Capannori near Lucca has only 50,000 inhabitants, but has achieved something that many large cities dream of.
After the construction of a waste incineration plant was prevented in 2007, the citizens decided to become the first“Zero Waste City” in Europe. A whole range of measures have been introduced to achieve this: for example, the door-to-door collection, training workshops and a reuse center for used items.

Probably the most important measure, however, was the pay-as-you-throw system: a household’s waste fee is calculated based on the actual amount of waste produced. The results of the trial are impressive – since its introduction, the city’s total waste volume has been reduced by 40% and individual waste charges have also fallen by over 20%.

There are now over 450 cities in Europe that want to emulate Capannori. Kiel, for example, wants to reduce its total waste by 15% over the next ten years. Munich also wants to become a zero waste city and is currently testing various collection and delivery systems for the yellow bag in order to optimize collection.
However, it should be noted that the term “zero waste city” is somewhat misleading – while the zero waste principle focuses entirely on waste avoidance, the cities are guided by the waste hierarchy and also rely on other approaches such as recycling.

Our conclusion: The example shows that it is perfectly possible to achieve ecological goals through motivated citizens – especially if this also results in economic benefits!