Benidorm saves €143,000 on waste management at the recycling centre between January and July this year

The Benidorm City Council has saved €143,092 in waste management fees at the recycling centre between January and July of this year, according to data provided by the Department of Street Cleaning and the Consorci Mare (Mare Consortium). During the same period last year, before the management of the centre was transferred to the Consortium, the City Council paid €386,303. The projected annual savings for this year will amount to approximately €245,000.

These savings have been made possible by the fee schedule approved by the Consorci Mare. The fee for bulky and bulky waste, which constitutes the largest category, is now €48.40 per ton, compared to the €75.76 the council paid until last year. This represents a 36% reduction. Savings from this category alone reach €74,360.

This reduction alone accounts for €74,360 in total. The president of Consorci Mare, José Ramón González de Zárate, and the councillor for Street Cleaning of the Benidorm City Council, Luis Navarro, visited the facilities of the municipality's permanent recycling centre, where they announced figures resulting from the facility's new management. In this regard, González de Zárate highlighted the fact that "more than 2,500 tons of waste deposited at the recycling centre by users from other towns are no longer charged to the municipality of Benidorm." This is possible because, under Consorci Mare's management, a system has been implemented to identify users and their origin, "which assigns each deposit to the corresponding municipality and therefore no longer impacts Benidorm's municipal budget."

Specifically, from January to July, these contributions from outside the municipality totalled 2,562 tons, representing 47% of the total recorded in 2015. “The service provided to Benidorm residents has not decreased; what has disappeared is the external bill,” stated González de Zárate, who emphasised that access control “has put an end to an anomaly whereby Benidorm was paying for the management of waste that wasn't its own. Now, each municipality is responsible for what it contributes.”

Another advantage of the new management system is that the Consortium registers and segregates 55 waste fractions, whereas the previous system only distinguished around 20. This allows, the Consortium president pointed out, “a much greater leap forward in the flows that require the most traceability, such as electronic and electrical equipment, which has gone from three categories to 14; packaging, which has gone from two to eight; and construction waste, from one to four.” In the latter case, that of construction waste, the change has concrete environmental effects. This year, 64.5 tons of construction waste contaminated with hazardous materials, which previously travelled as ordinary rubble, have been identified and treated as such. “The same applies to 28.6 tons of mattresses and 30 tons of appliances containing refrigerants, which now have their own designated destination and traceability,” González de Zárate emphasised.

Furthermore, 25 of the 55 waste streams registered under the new management system have a zero rate for the City Council, “meaning that Benidorm residents can go to the recycling centre to deposit paper, glass, metals, plastics, textiles, oils, batteries, and electrical appliances at no cost to the municipal coffers,” the Consortium president revealed. “We have improved environmental efficiency by moving to 55 separate fractions, managing to identify in these months more than 64 tons of contaminated rubble that was previously mixed with inert material,” he concluded.