Essay G, by Marco Volpi.

1. G. Do you think that the lifestyle of the inhabitants of
your town or city reflects behavior that is in line with the
concept of sustainable development? In your opinion,
what should be improved?
Marco Volpi
IE APPLICATION
ESSAY

2. I live in Tortona, a small town in
the North-west of Italy with
28.500 inhabitants.
MY HOMETOWN
Let’s see how the lifestyle of its
population is coherent with the
concept of sustainable
development.
I decided to focus on the
WASTE MANAGEMENT
PROBLEM

3. THE WASTE ISSUE
Like in all towns in Italy, Tortona’s level of domestic solid waste is
increasing and there is a serious problem of oversaturation in our
receptive structures.
Half of the domestic solid rubbish (0.98 kg/per
person/a day) is thrown everyday in generic
waste containers.
Then it is transported to the municipal landfill
and stays there for years until it decomposes.
So our landfill is filled with tons of toxic material
that will need years to be disposed of.
This is why we need a solution to this problem.

4. A SUSTAINABLE AND CLEAN SOLUTION
Waste sorting is the process by
which waste is separated into
different elements.
It begins by dividing rubbish
into , plastic, glass and
organic.
This are then collected and
transported to material
recovery facilities or
mechanical biological
treatment plants.
The solution that we are trying to adopt in Tortona is to increase the
percentage of WASTE SORTING
This method makes possible the recycle of a lot of waste that can be
recovered, transformed and re-used.

5. SEPARATE COLLECTION OF WASTE
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Tortona 44.1 48.1 49.4 57.2 49.4 50.4
Italian average 27.3 30.6 33.6 35.5 37.7 39.9
EU standards 40 45 50 50 60 65
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
% of waste sorting1
1: data from www.anci.it
This graphic illustrates the data of the differentiate collection of waste in
Tortona in the last 6 years, compared to the Italian average and to the
European standards that we should follow.

6. MY VISIT TO
TORTONA
WASTE
TREATMENT
PLANT
I personally visited the
waste treatment plant of
my hometown to
comprehend what it
means to recuperate
domestic waste. The
centre I visited is a
specialized plant that
treats recyclable material
to then sell it.
This is the right place to
see how our inhabitants
divide their rubbish and to
understand the
opportunities that a good
waste management has.

7. After this check, the garbage is compressed and
then sold to societies that complete the recycling
process.
So, this is an efficient way to dispose our waste: it is
economically convenient for the community and
more sustainable, especially if compared with
landfills and incinerators.
THE PROCESS
All the collected waste arrives here and every
type of rubbish is taken to a different
platform, where it is manually operated and
checked to see if there are some impurities.

8. THE BUG
The principal problem in this
process is that the quality of
separation of litter, that is
done by the population at
home, is not really efficient.
After my visit in this plant, I
realised that Tortona’s
inhabitants must be educated
and informed about waste
sorting.
We should try to explain how
important it is to separate litter
the correct way.

9. SO THERE IS A PROBLEM:
SOLUTIONS
As we have seen, the problem of waste sorting is that people do not
separate litter the proper way, thus increasing costs and making
recycled product’s quality worse.
In my opinion, the public administration should educate its
population, promoting an authentic zero waste strategy, that focuses
on preventing—through changes in design, production, and
consumption—and recovering of waste.
Another solution is a door to-door collection system.
A strong dialogue with
the citizens is necessary
to explain what are
their tasks.
Information: info points
should be created and
brochures should be
distributed during town
fairs and events.
IMPORTANT POINTS:
Schools’ important
role: environmental
education should be
thought to school’s
students.

10. A GOOD EXAMPLE TO FOLLOW:
door-to-door in Ponte nelle Alpi
Ponte nelle Alpi is a small town with 8500 inhabitants and is the best Italian
municipality regarding door-to-door collection system.
Ponte nelle Alpi started in 2007 a complete revolution in the way of
collecting rubbish: the municipality distributed four small bins per
household, removed the large containers from the streets, established waste
separation as mandatory, and launched door-to-door collection.
The results have been surprising.

11. A GOOD EXAMPLE TO FOLLOW:
door-to-door in Ponte nelle Alpi
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
% 23.8 85.8 88.1 89.3 90.1 90.2
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
% of waste sorting2
2: data from “Comune Ponte nelle Alpi”.
Beginning of
door-to-door
system
With the beginning
of the door-to-
door system Ponte
nelle Alpi reached
these incredible
results in a few
years:
-from 23,8% of
waste sorting in
2007 to 90,2% in
2012!

12. A GOOD EXAMPLE TO FOLLOW:
door-to-door in Ponte nelle Alpi
OTHER GOOD RESULTS:
-in 2007 the costs of disposal was 50% of the total cost of waste management
services
-in 2012 it decreased to 4,8%.
Disposal costs have decreased by 92% in just 5 years
This lead to a decrease of fixed costs and to a major investment in new
occupation: 10 new employees were hired between 2008 and 2012.
Moreover, users now have to pay
less for service and the more they
separate the less they pay.

13. A WIND OF CHANGE
Tortona’s target is to get to a zero-waste philosophy: it means reducing
what we discard in landfills and incinerators to a minimum.
As we have seen with Ponte nelle Alpi, door-to-door is a concrete solution.
• A modern new facility has just been completed by
Tortona’s administration. It is a structure that allows a
complete recovery of organic material: the method is
called “Anaerobic digestion” and its aim is to produce
energy using waste.
The collaboration of population is
fundamental: we must learn
more about waste sorting and
sustainable development to be
fully collaborative
A waste management with this aim
should provide effective
policies, regulations, incentives, an
d financing structures to support
these systems.
GOOD NEWS
• Tortona begun, in 2013, door-to-door collection.