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| Garcia Tejerina |
Twenty-nine Spanish local authorities (town councils and groups of municipalities) in 12 autonomous regions have been recognised for excellence in managing selective paper and board collection in the first edition of ASPAPEL’s (Spanish Association of Pulp and Paper Manufacturers’ Blue Birdies scheme.
The Blue Birdies 2017 award ceremony took place in Madrid under the chairmanship of Isabel Garcia Tejerina, minister of Agriculture & Fisheries, Food and Environment, and was attended by numerous mayors and presidents of local associations, the association reports.
Garcia Tejerina highlighted “the efforts made in recent years by a highly specialised business sector. According to sectorial data, in 2015, 78% of all paper consumed in Spain was recycled, and collection of paper for recycling reached the figure of 4.6 million tons.”
To reach such results, Garcia Tejerina considers the involvement of local councils and the awareness of their citizens to be essential. In her words, “municipal councils and citizens form a tandem on which this formula for success pivots, so it is essential that we support their efforts.”
She congratulated the 29 municipalities awarded with “Blue Birdies” for excellence in their management of selective paper and board collection. She also expressed her “appreciation of ASPAPEL’s work, which has received awards in the European Union—the European Paper Recycling Award—and has become a model to be followed in other European countries.”
Enrique Isidro, president of ASPAPEL, highlighted the success of such joint effort and commitment. “The collaboration between administration-citizen-industry, the strength and efficiency of our collection systems, the information given out by the media and our paper industry’s recycling capacity are a winning combination, resulting in a highly efficient selective collection system, with collection and recycling rates that place us amongst the world’s elite,” Isidro said.
Six local authorities were awarded the maximum distinction with three Blue Birdies, 15 obtained two Blue Birdies and eight received one Blue Birdie.
The twenty-nine winning councils include municipalities of very different sizes from 12 autonomous regions. Three towns have a population of more than 500,000, nine have populations between 200,000 and 500,000, 10 have populations between 100,000 and 200,000, and seven have populations with between 50,000 and 100,000 inhabitants (ASPAPEL’s Blue Birdie programme is directed at town councils and groups of municipalities with a population greater than 50,000).
By autonomous regions, Andalusia, Castilla y Leon and Catalonia have five local authorities each among the prize-winners: Madrid with four; Aragon and Castilla-La Mancha with two; and Asturias, Balearic Isles, Galicia, La Rioja, Navarre and the Basque Country with one each.
Promoting recycling is one of ASPAPEL’s strategic objectives, following the launch in 2002 of its Tu Papel Es Importante project and subsequently its Tu Papel 21 programme, a scheme for assessing, implementing improvements and certifying municipal selective paper and board collection systems.
This project won the European Paper Recycling Award in 2007, which recognises innovative projects for promoting paper recycling in Europe, with a panel of judges made up of members of the European Parliament and the European Commission, associations (the Association of Cities and Regions for Recycling and Sustainable Resource Management, ACR+) and nongovernmental organisations (WWF International).
ASPAPEL renewed the programme in 2016, after 10 years of service to municipal councils, offering them technical advice, recognition and visibility in the continuous improvement of their management of municipal selective collection of paper and paperboard.
The program is now run on an annual basis, and the town councils and groups of municipalities that reach excellence in selective paper and board collection management obtain special recognition, with a scale of targets that translates into one, two or three Blue Birdies.
Score assessment is carried out on the basis of 21 indicators, which are grouped into five blocks: blue bin collection, supplementary collection, public information and awareness, regulation and planning, and results and traceability up to final recycling.
Programme Director Andrea Orallo said “giving the scheme an annual structure allows ASPAPEL to carry out follow-ups and provide constant advice, accompanying the municipality in its continuous improvement process and adapting its annual programme to new challenges in municipal selective collection.” As an example, she cited the quality of collected paper and board, “which,” she explained, “is becoming increasingly important in order to achieve the true transformation of waste into useful resources within the circular economy of paper and, for that, we are encouraging municipal councils to install more efficient and effective collection systems and that sales specifications for paper from selective collection take into account the material’s quality parameters