The undersecretary of the Ministry of Territorial Policy, Ignacio de Domingo, handed over to the mayor of Abona granadilla, Jose Domingo Regaladohe highest national award in recycling: Tres Pajaritas Azules. With this, the excellence of the municipal management in the selective collection of paper and cardboard during 2022, being the only award-winning municipality in the Canary Islands. It’s been six consecutive years now.
The mayor received the award during a ceremony held in the Rafael del Pino auditorium (Madrid), in the presence of the president of the Spanish Association of Pulp, Paper and Cardboard Manufacturers (Aspapel), Eduardo Querol, and the deputy director general of Circular Economy of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Margarita Ruiz. Also in attendance were the president and vice president of the municipal public company responsible for the selective waste collection service, sermugran, Marcos González and María Candelaria Rodríguez.
José Domingo Regalado indicated that this award belongs to the citizens of Granada, whose collaboration allows the municipality to register high levels in waste recycling, a task that endorses the recognition achieved. González highlighted that Sermugran is the only public company in the Canary Islands with this distinction, internationally recognized with the European Paper Recycling Award, and Rodríguez highlighted that it is “the fourth time that we have achieved the third bow tie, which strengthens the commitment made six years ago to assume the management of the collection of paper and cardboard”.
there are conditions
With seven years of history, Pajaritas Azules is an annual program of advice, evaluation and recognition of the quality of municipal management of selective collection for the recycling of paper and cardboard focused on continuous improvement. To maintain or progress in category, the entities that participate in Pajaritas Azules have to develop an improvement plan, since each year the program is more demanding in each of its twenty-one indicators.
To achieve this, a plan of corrective measures and technical advice are activated for each participant. Similarly, the quality of the material collected is an essential element for the circular economy of paper and decarbonisation. For this reason, in order to opt to be recognized with any of the three levels of Pajaritas Azules, it is necessary to have a quality control and improvement procedure and that the average amount of unsuitable waste, those wastes that are deposited incorrectly in a container, is at least less than or equal to 10% by dry weight.
On this occasion, Granadilla de Abona is one of the 34 local entities to those awarded by Tres Pajaritas Azules, together with cities such as Bilbao, Barcelona, Cádiz, Córdoba, Getafe, Gijón, Palma de Mallorca, Castilla La Mancha, Segovia, Valladolid and Zaragoza, among others. The rest are distributed in two bow ties for nine municipalities, and one for three.
