E’ una soddisfazione condividere questo grande spazio dedicatomi da una rivista importante quale WERDE.
Sia perchè essa è la più venduta in Germania sui temi “verdi” in Germania, sia perchè ancora di più diffonde a livello internazionale la “narrazione” positiva dello Zero Waste italiano che ha in Capannori la sua “culla”.
E si sa: la Germania in quanto a temi ambientali rappresenta uno “spazio” di primaria importanza non solo in europa.
L’unico “peccato” è la lingua: purtroppo, ovviamente, la lingua dell’articolo è il tedesco.
Grazie a Stephanie Eichler che ringrazio sia quale autrice dell’articolo (Lei e il suo compagno alessio fotografo vennero a Capannori lo scorso settembre),
sia quale tradruttrice in inglese che spero serva ad una più diffusa condivisione dell’articolo,
Ovviamente, il racconto comprende anche l’incontro con il sindaco Luca Menesini sia con una delle famiglie Rifiuti Zero di Capannori (la famiglia Piccinini).
Articolo originale e traduzione in Inglese
Living better garbage-free
Signor Ercolini is a teacher and activist. He advises European cities in terms of recycling and waste.
In Naples waste separation is getting successful, and in Paris a whole quarter counts on composting.
Rossano Ercolini bends down and reaches for a crumpled plastic bottle, which somebody threw away on the town hall square in Capannori, a town in Tuscany with 50,000 inhabitants.
The man in his mid-60s is not a pensioner who boosts his budget with discarted plastic bottles. (In Germany a lot of persons do so.) But it is Ercolini’s heart’s desire to recycle garbage.
Since more than twenty years, he gets people to participate: It`s because of him that the population of around 300 Italian municipalities presort 80 to 95 percent of their household waste for recycling.
To compare: the German average is at about 65 percent. But not only that: due to his work the separation of waste has become a good practice throughout Europe.
In a
café opposite the town hall, the Italian puts the plastic bottle he
found on a little table. “The
bottle is a valuable
resource”, he looks straight into his interlocutor`s eyes and
raise his brows.
“If we collect disposed glass, cardboard,
plastic and organic waste separately, we can continue to use them.
But when we throw it away all together, we create garbage.”
Everyone understands these equations. Ercolini is a primary school
teacher. He never tires of explaining that the disposal of
waste
causes greenhouse gas emissions and wastes resources, which on top
are getting scarcer and scarcer.
Ercolini’s
commitment is a success story that began with a protest action in
1996. The regional government of the Province of Lucca was planning
the construction of two
waste incineration plants. “I
wanted to prevent this, because I feared for the health of my
students”, says the activist, carefully sipping his Espresso.
“One of the facilities should be located near the school.”
He succeeded in making the public aware of the risks of the
incineration plant and convinced the people. The government withdrew
its plans. The incinerator was not built.
Where to put the garbage?
Even
at a garbage man, Ercolini cannot get rid of his plastic bottle. In a
residential neighborhood near the café Daniele Pellegrini does not
collect plastic this day, but glass. He drives the little garbage
truck himself, which is operated with natural gas in an
environmentally friendly manner. Pellegrini lifts the lid of a
garbage can. “When I realize that the bottles and glasses are
not clean, or when there is residual waste or plastic in the bin, I
don´t take the garbage away.”
He then sticks an
inscription on it with the words: Attention: The material is not
properly separated. “But that does not occur very often,”
he says.
“The
cleaner the plastic, paper or glass, the better quality the
recyclate,” explains Ercolini. “Pizza boxes, for example
are rather residual waste , because they are usually very greasy.”
From the beginning, the people of Capannori took waste separation
seriously. “They appreciated that we didn’t just say no,”
recalls the zero waste pioneer, “we were also delivering
alternatives to waste incineration.” And these alternatives are
starting at the reduction of the risidual waste. Even in the few
apartment blocks of Capannori there are no more general containers,
instead each housing unit places its own bags and bins at the street.
“People feel more responsible about their waste and sort
better,” says Ercolini, who introduced this system as an interim
manager of the public garbage collection. For this task he had to
take a year’s leave of absence as a primary school teacher. “It
is mainly this collection system that contributes so recycle so much
waste,” he reports. “We sell our recyclable waste, plastic,
aluminium, iron, steel, for 140 EUR per tonne to the national
packaging consortium, that recycles a large percentage.” But
also plastic from Capannori is sometimes burned to produce energy.
“Plastic is our big problem,” says Ercolini. “Our goal
is to recycle more plastics anything else is just a temporary
solution.” Paper recycling works much better: The paper mills
of
the surroundings are using a big amount of the
paper-waste.
Reception with Barack Obama
A second
important measure: Ercolini carries out random samplings of the
residual waste bins. He calls it “screening”. He finds lots
of diapers in the bins. Although the city government supports the
purchase of cloth diapers, in Capannori most parents use disposable
nappies to change their babies. But Ercolini has already contacted
the world’s first diaper recycling plant in the northern Italian city
of Treviso. During the school holidays, if he is not teaching,
Ercolini has been advising
other communities, he was also
consulting in Istanbul and Beirut. His expertise is even demanded in
Naples: For decades the Camorra together with corrupt politicians
prevented a functioning dealing with the garbage. If the garbage
piled up on sidewalks and streets, the clans picked it up for
horrendous prices and cart it off to illegal landfills. But with
Ercolini’s support bit by bit more waste separation is succeeding. “I
have no wife and no children,” he says with his broad smile,
“and can almost invest my whole time.”
For his
commitment, the Italian was awarded with the Goldman Environmental
Prize in 2013, a renowned Environmental Protection Award. In this
context a reception with then US President Barack Obama took place.
“We should dress formally,” says Ercolini, stands up
straight and makes a first face. “I was wearing a suit and tie
when Obama shook my hand.” It is clear to see, that Ercolini was
very glad about the recognition. But the fact that trousers an
jackets don´t contain plastic is more important for him than the
dress code, because it escapes in microparticles during washing and
ends up with the treated wastewater in rivers and lakes.
Following Ercolini’s work, the city council of Capannori signed already in 2007 the zero-waste strategy and thus committed itself to standards like a consistent waste sorting system, as the first city in Europe. With the city of Kiel, which the Italian is currently supporting, the first German city is now working on a plan to join the zero waste initiative. Since the end of 2018, the movement is also advising a project in Paris, in which about 6000 private persons and operators of more than 100 small businesses are working on the reduction of waste in the French capital. There is a lot of residual waste there. Almost 80 percent of all waste ist residual waste. The Europe-wide average is 60 percent.
Léa Vasa,
councillor of the 10th arrondissement, launched the Project “Rue
Zero Déchet” with a bundle of measures for the Parisian
district, as a local contribution to the national climate plan, which
already had been declared by the French government in 2007. “For
me it was important to respond to the wishes of local residents and
draw from their experiences,” she says. “So the quarter was
able to reduce its residual waste by 17 percent within a year.”
People now sort their garbage more consistently. At the same time the
amount of waste in the recycling bin also shrank. Overall, in the
course of the last year, more than 100,000 kilograms of waste were
completely avoided.
“Before, people used to call the City
Hall because they wanted to complain about the garbage disposal that
did not arrive on time”, says Vasa. “Now the call us,
because they want to participate in our project.”
One
of the first was Vittoria Romain with her restaurant Manicaretti in
the Rue de Paradis. It`s 10.30 am on a weekday, she stands at the
stove and cuts cauliflower stems small. What other cooks throw away,
is transformed into a delicious ingredient for the soup of the day.
The bread from the previous day serves grilled and soaked in homemade
almond milk to thicken a chocolate cream. “I only use leftovers
where the nutrients are preserved and that taste good,” explains
Romain. “Since the opening of my restaurant more than three
years ago, I am follow a few rules about waste avoidance.” Her
experience is now also being used by other restaurant operators. “I
get fruit and vegetables in pallets made of wood and plastic, I give
the packiging back to the suppliers to use them again.” In
workshops, which the district administration offers within the
project, Romain tells others about it. “I like to exchange
experiences,” she says. “I realize that as a society we are
moving.” She got her customers on board. From 12.30 pm on a lot
of guests come to buy lunch. But many do not stay, they rather take
their lunch to office. “On average, 15 people bring their own
reusable food boxes with them, tendency rising,” observes
Romain. “They get a five percent off.” If the take the big
portion for 12 euros, waste avoiders save 60 cents a day.
Also
Jean-Claude and Élodie Seguis, who live in the neighbourhood like
workshops within the project: they have learned to make deodorant and
toothpaste themself, and buy almost everything unpacked. And they
pass on their own knowledge: In their typical Parisian kitchen with
its clotheslines just below the ceiling to take advantage of that
space too, Élodie Segui talks about a workshop within she set up a
sewing machine and showed interested people on a weekend, how old
pillowcases become environmentally friendly bread bags. But the whole
pride of the couple is in the yard: a container with dozens of
earthworms. They pull the vegetable and fruit waste from the
inhabitants of the four-storey house deep into the container, eat
them, digest and excrete out. This produces valuable compost. “To
prevent it from becoming moist, we also add cardboard, which is best
suited for egg cartons,” says Jean-Claude Seguis. “We talk
with the other residents about the
composter. Sometimes we meet next to the worms for an aperitif.”
Since winter 2018/19, when the project started, more and more residents are feeding earthworms with kitchen waste. “We have provided small composters, each can be used by one residential unit, free of charge,” explains Léa Vasa, the coordinator. “The households that participate, have reduced their residual waste by 20 to 30 percent”, because biowaste has not been collected separately in the 10th arrondissement before. But there is more: “We have now extended our pilot project for a second year, especially to appeal to the many shopkeepers.” Vasa would like to contribute to the fact that in clothing stores more biomode will be offered and customers and customers have the opportunity to return their old clothes.
Industry in the duty
Rossano
Ercolini also knows that it is of great benefit if a city
administration is involved: “In Capannori there are tax breaks
for the operators of supermarkets, if they offer products
unpackaged.” In his so-called Research Center, a hall where he
presents the results of
research cooperations, he is chewing on
a little tube which he conceived to replace both disposable straws
and lollipops wrapped in plastic. “We have to obligate the
industry. They have to withdraw certain products from the market
such as coffee capsules, which cannot be recycled, and develop
alternatives.” He wants to take the bottle home, that he found
in the town hall square in the morning in order to put it into his
private container for plastic waste. He only has to have it emptied
once a year.
