Tenerife only recycled 3% of organic waste last year, while the rest ended up being buried in the Arico Environmental Complex. With the New Waste Law approved by the Spanish Congress, the island will have to recycle 55% before 2025 and reach 65% ten years later, if it does not want to receive the European fines as it happens with discharges into the sea, where we have led the sanctions ranking.
The Cabildo has got its act together with discharges with the construction of five large regional treatment plants, thanks to more than 170 million from the State through Acuaes, although some are pending flow (Güímar Valley) from municipalities that barely They have a sewage system. Similarly, eight years after the expiration of the extension of a contract signed in January 1985, on Friday the management of Tenerife’s waste began by the joint venture FCC-Urbaser, after the signing of the new waste management contract de la Isla, which will be in force until 2037, with the possibility of extending it for four more years, and which has an award budget of 397,475,058 euros. Until now, this has been the largest contract in the history of the Cabildo de Tenerife.
The Island Councilor for Sustainable Development and the Fight against Climate Change, Javier Rodriguez Medina, indicated that in this new contract “investments are planned both in the Tenerife Environmental Complex and in the different transfer plants to modernize the facilities, increase from eight to 16 clean points, always with the aim of improving yields and increasing the percentages of recovery” and foresees an investment of almost 52 million euros to be executed in the first years of execution of the contract for the extension and improvement of the insular waste treatment infrastructures, in the same way the concessionaire is required to recover at least 42% of plastics, steel 51%, aluminum 50%, brick 38%, glass 20%, paper and cardboard 18% and 37% in domestic waste. The new contract is ambitious and will transform the management we have had in the last thirty-five years“.
However, days before, the award of plot AG2 to the UTE Arico Green Gass company for the treatment of 90,454 tons per year of organic fraction from the mechanical treatment plant, 24,702 tons per year of sewage sludge and 14,100 tons per year of livestock waste. This contest was harshly criticized by the opposition in the Cabildo when they understood that it was “burning” garbage, something that the island government denied. Rodríguez Medina pointed out that this is bad news, because the bidding for plot AG2 complied with the guidelines of the Insular Plan for Land Management (PIOT) and the Special Territorial Plan for Waste Management (PTEOR) and indicated that the rejection of the proposal is due to strictly administrative issues, denying that it was a covert incineration process.
According to the latest data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the Canary Islands are the third community that generates the most waste per person, 577 kilos, only behind the Balearic Islands (737) and Cantabria (579).
Only 3% recycling
In the 2021 waste balance, the total domestic waste received last year stood at 527,301.730 tons, which represents an increase of 2.01% compared to 2020. The 31 municipalities dumped 412,917.310 tons (78, 3%), while individuals 114,384.420 tons (21.7%). Only 3% of the tons of organic waste could be used for composting because there was no separation of organic matter at source, the lowest percentage in the Canary Islands, when it is usually between 5% and 10%, he recalls. Alexis Sicilypresident of Canarias Residuos Cero (ZWC), still very far from the 55% required for 2025 and 65% for 2035 the New Waste Law.
In this sense, Javier Rodríguez Medina, recalls that “there are still many people who do not participate in the process of separating organic matter and throw away the mixed garbage”, also emphasizing the need “for the fifth container, the brown one, when only one of the 31 municipalities, Santa Cruz, has begun to implement it”, something that according to the counselor contrasts with the increase in recycling in containers and glass (increase of 10% last year).
The counselor hopes that the new contract will also serve to reduce the carbon footprint produced by the 100 trucks that carry 1,600 tons of waste a day to Arico, with trucks of greater tonnage. “We have to avoid collapse and energy bankruptcy with burials and implement the recycling industry and achieve a more sustainable Tenerife”, recalling that if it is not achieved “the fines will come as has happened with the discharges, recording rates with the discharges in cells, bury the waste, that is understood”. “The problem is not in the yellow container or in the green one, it is in the collection of organic matter, which means more than half of the garbage that we generate”, remarked the counselor.
Alexis Santana, Zero Waste
Alexis Sicilia, president of Canarias Residuos Cero (ZWC) is skeptical about the new waste collection tender put out to tender by the Cabildo. “I don’t think that with those 400 million, in fifteen years, it will be possible to stop burying the garbage in Arico, because the problem is not in Arico, and it does not depend so much on the Cabildo, but on the multinationals that continue to package apples and pears, or the lack of a fifth container in homes in Tenerife and in the contests held by the 31 municipalities of the island, many of them without specialized technicians to do so”, commented Sicilia on Onda Tenerife.
“Being responsible -he added- is not only putting the portfolio, but the means and knowledge. There is room to improve, of course, but it is hard for us to reach 55% recycling in three years when we have not been able to go from 3% in thirty”.
He also warned that “the increase in spending in municipal competitions, such as that of Santa Cruz with more than 170 million, and now of the Cabildo, the garbage rate is going to increase citizens between 35 to 45 euros per year.”
