PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Aware on the increasing environmental problems produced by packaging waste, the EU has set stricter recycling targets for the coming years looking forward to achieving 90% recovery rates by 2029 as set out in the European Plastics Strategy. Pushed by EU binding targets and social demand, some member countries, and regional and local authorities, have started to operate Reward-As-You-Throw schemes (RAYT) with the intention to improve their recycling rates. In RAYTs the citizens are rewarded for sorting and returning their packaging waste. There are a growing number of national RAYT programs across Europe for example, Portugal: Recicla Oeste Cim (oestecim.pt); Spain: Reciclos (reciclos.com); France: RAYT (terradona.com); Austria: Recyclemich (recyclemich.at); UK: Hubbub (hubbub.org.uk) among others. CENTS4PACK addresses the further development, validation and large-scale demonstration of an innovative IoT based solution, RECYSMART, that facilitates the deployment of RAYTs to increase recovery rates. Installed over any street bin, RecySmart is able to characterize all packaging materials introduced: glass, plastic, metal and carton brick, using edge-AI acoustics techniques. The complete solution will be demonstrated 12 months in the City of Guadalajara of 86,222 inhabitants. The city has 1,063 selective bins (631 glass – Green, 432 light packaging), we aim to equip 500 bins with RecySmart (305 for Glass and 195 for Light Packaging.). With the system in place, we look forward to increase the recovery rates by 25% with respect to the previous scenario (2018). The impact for the project end is to increase the recovery rates by 137 tons of glass recovered + 196 tons of light packaging recovered = 402 Tons of CO2 saved equivalent to the yearly absorption of 18,531 trees. CENTS4PACK aims to bring an important transformation to society, changing the way we see waste and how we deal with it.