Waste - Outlook 2020 (Portugal)

The main trends in the development of the UW management sector involve increasing the management capacity of the systems. After an initial stage in which a great many final-destination technological infrastructures were built, the next phase of investment will focus on recovery technologies. In recycling, the aim is for increased efficiency in the collection and subsequent sorting of waste. In the field of organic recovery, efforts will be ongoing to divert biodegradable material from landfills, requiring considerable investment in biological treatment technologies and in mitigation and contingency measures to achieve the goals of the Landfill Directive.

Portugal has undertaken to meet the targets for recycling packaging waste under the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive, which obliges Member States to respect a minimum recovery rate of 60 % by weight by the end of 2011, at least 55 % of which must correspond to recycling material. The minimum sectorial recycling targets are 60 % of paper/cardboard and glass packaging waste, 50 % of metal, 22.5 % of plastics and 15 % of wood.

Decree-Law No. 183/2009 of 10 August 2009, which transposes the Landfill Directive into Portuguese legislation, establishes the legal framework for landfilling and the technical characteristics and requirements for the design, licensing, building, operation, closure and post-closure of landfills. It sets targets for reducing landfilling of BUW by 50 % by weight in 2013 and by 35 % in 2020 using 1995 as the benchmark.

The Urban Waste Prevention Programme (PPRU), approved in February 2010, identifies four scenarios for the period 2007-2016 on the basis of available statistics and the results of existing urban waste prevention projects:

a)      optimistic: corresponding to a reduction of 21 % in daily collections in 2016, compared to 2007;

b)      moderate: corresponding to a reduction of 10 % in daily collections in 2016, compared to 2007;

c)       PERSU II[1]: corresponding to a reduction of 1.4 % in daily collections in 2016, compared to 2007;

d)      business-as-usual (BaU): corresponding to an increase of 1.9 % in daily collections in 2016, compared to 2007.

The development of these scenarios is represented in Figure 9.

Figure 9 Development of the collection of urban waste in Portugal: Optimistic, Moderate, PERSU II and BaU scenarios

Source: PPRU, 2010

Figure 10 Development of the total production of urban waste in Portugal: Optimistic, Moderate, PERSU II and BaU scenarios

Source: PPRU, 2010

It is considered that the moderate scenario as the most likely to be able to achieve. To this end related measures were applied with information on practicability on the ground and on their potential for the disaggregated reduction in line with the fraction/flow.

Table 2 Cumulative reductions envisaged (2009-2016) as a result of the adoption of the moderate scenario, 2009-2016