The City Solutions Platform is supporting the City of São Paulo to develop solutions for waste management in the city.
Currently, around 12,000 tonnes of household waste are collected daily in the city, of which 6,000 tonnes are organic waste. Disposing of this waste without reusing it depletes landfills, is environmentally costly for the city, and is ultimately a waste of raw material.
In that context, São Paulo is looking to develop solutions for waste management in the city, including the development of innovative waste collection processes, new waste treatment processes, waste as a resource, and the treatment of organic waste. The City of São Paulo is also developing the “EcoPark project”, consisting of treating undifferentiated household waste through Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT).
The City of São Paulo also has a program to treat organic waste from street and municipal markets. The program currently covers 870 street markets per week and 34 municipal markets, which altogether generate almost 1,000 tonnes of organic waste every week. The City of São Paulo has 5 operational composting patios using a system of thermophilic (hot) compost piles, and treating fruit and vegetable waste produced at, and collected from, the street markets. The 5 patios receive only 20% of all the organic waste produced at these markets, and only 3 new patios are currently planned to be opened by the end of 2019.
Until the end of 2020, the City aims for all fruit and vegetable waste produced at street and municipal markets to be composted. Today, however, the City of São Paulo faces the barrier of finding new areas in which to build the new patios, meaning that innovation is urgently needed for organic waste composting in urban areas. The goal of this City Solutions Platform challenge is to find alternatives for large-scale organic waste treatment in urban areas.
A CSP workshop took place in São Paulo from 24th-25th October 2019.
