€670 million to combat the recycling failure in the Barcelona area

BarcelonaIn the Barcelona area, recycling isn't enough. With selective collection rates stagnating at 38.8%—some towns not even reaching 30%—the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB) announced this Thursday its plan to change its model, given that the European mandate to recycle 55% of municipal waste is being violated. Thus, by 2035, the supra-municipal body plans to invest €673 million in the construction of ten specialized waste treatment plants and redesign some of the current ones to minimize waste generation, promote the reuse of materials, and improve waste separation rates at source—that is, the proportion of waste collected from our homes.

Primarily, the AMB proposes two substantial changes: on the one hand, promoting the recovery of materials that still have a useful life through new infrastructure, and, on the other, moving from a selective collection eco-park model to a model where organic waste is fully treated and utilized within the park. To this end, €90 million will be allocated to prevention and reuse, €200 million to material recovery, and nearly €400 million to improving the treatment of organic matter.

While Europe is calling for a reduction in waste, in Catalonia too much is still produced and too little is recycled; the 9% reduction achieved overall since 2010 is not enough. This is evidenced by the data that the AMB made public this Thursday from Gavà at the presentation of the future strategy for the treatment and management of municipal waste: in 2024 alone, €1,442,49 were generated. 422.4 kilograms per inhabitant per year. "We are not meeting any of the regulatory recycling targets," admitted Guille López, CEO of Climate Action at the AMB (Mexico City Association of Municipalities), in a statement.

Last year, only 11 of the 36 metropolitan municipalities reached the 55% selective collection target: Begues, Castellbisbal, Corbera de Llobregat, Pallejà, Palma de Cervelló, Papiol, Ripollet, Sant Just Desvern, and Santa Coloma de Cervell. The Barcelona neighborhoods of Sarrià and Sant Andreu de Palomar must also be added to this list. For the AMB, the turning point will come with the implementation of systems such as door-to-door systems or closed containers in larger cities, as already done in Prat de Llobregat and Cornellà de Llobregat, and the pilot test announced in Barcelona for 2026.

the reuse of materials, according to AMB sources. Currently, much of the selectively collected organic matter (eggshells, fruit and vegetable peelings, etc.) is sent to ecoparks and, in some cases, to two composting plants in the area. There, it is transformed into high-quality compost for agriculture or into electrical energy. In contrast, the organic matter that arrives mixed with the residual fraction (the one in the gray container) is of much lower quality and cannot be used equally; a difference that is also reflected in the costs: treating a ton of residual fraction costs around 130 euros, while a ton of properly separated organic matter, around 65, is half that. However, currently only 39% of this fraction is selectively collected.

Faced with this situation, the metropolitan government is proposing to convert the ecoparks into integrated organic waste plants, that is, facilities that will both collect organic waste and treat it and produce new useful products, such as compost or biogas. With this change, the infrastructure will gain an additional capacity of 150,000 tons per year, as well as the possibility of generating customized fertilizers. For example, transforming biogas into biomethane. The ultimate goal is for less than 16% of the waste to end up in landfills or energy recovery plants, and for a maximum of 10% to end up in controlled landfills.

Recovery centers in the Besòs and Llobregat regions

The AMB will build several plants dedicated to material recovery with the goal of integrating them into circular economy circuits, one for the Besòs region (by 2030) and another for the Llobregat region (by 2028). These plants will receive items from various specific collections, clean points, and bulky items collection, and will have a warehouse, a repair shop, and a shop or exhibition space. In addition, there will be surplus food management plants with workshops to prevent waste, and packaging washing plants that will clean and sanitize containers for reuse, which will reduce the production of disposable containers by 2032. "A system of versatile material plants is being proposed," the organization explains.

Currently, there are metropolitan services focused on reducing waste production, such as the Millor Que Nou space, operating since 2010, which helps users, free of charge, repair their broken objects in a wide variety of categories (electronics, DIY, carpentry, woodworking, bicycles). Initiatives like this prevent the generation of 20 tons of waste each year. However, the new metropolitan waste strategy aims to take reuse to a much larger scale.

One of the reasons why the metropolitan government has explained that it will make structural changes is to adapt to the new reality: the current system of open containers on the street has reached the limits of its effectiveness and must respond to the city councils that are already implementing new collection systems with user identification (it takes door-to-door changes to achieve a significant increase in the separation by fractions at source.

Increasing the number of waste treatment facilities also aims to facilitate compliance with European orders, which set a series of regulatory objectives for 2035. These are a 10% reduction in total waste generation compared to 2010 and in the generation of the 0 of the fraction 2 to 65%, the reduction of improper materials in the organic fraction to below 15% and the sending of less than 10% of the waste to a controlled deposit.