Holistic and multi-stakeholder approach to achieve municipal zero waste targets
Cologne should take a holistic approach to combating waste, making sure to involve all key stakeholders. Below are some tips that could be implemented, depending on the budget and the ambition
At the source:
- Push supermarkets and restaurants to use an inventory management software to best forecast the volumes needed, in order to avoid unsold products.
- Help supermarkets increase their offering of low/optimal packaging products
- The two above can also be done for non-food products
- Incentivise entrepreneurs to start no packaging food shops at scale, such as Färm
Logistics
- ban the use of mono-use plastics for take-away food
Waste bins
- Have organic waste bins. The waste can then be composted or used for biogas production via anaerobic digestion or for animal feed. Also from restaurants
- Also incentivise people and property owners to compost in their gardens
- Use IoT-driven software to analyse individual bins and optimise waste collection. A similar smaller scale solution can be used by restaurants for their own internal waste bins
Stakeholder engagement
- Incentivise people to throw their waste in the bins when in public by adding funny/colourful bins
Generally, add more waste bins, and separated by recycling category
- Push restaurants to provide a large and small food option for each dish to avoid large dishes that noone finishes
- Gamify recycling and reduced waste for citizens/employees/restaurants through an app-driven competition
- Look at how much waste is produced and not recycled by an average household. Take that quantity and sculpt a Koln Dom shaped construction and expose it in front of the Dom to send a message
Water
- There are several tools (e.g. low flow faucets) to push people to use less water
- Subsidise closed-loop water products (e.g. shower)
Construction
- provide benefits to real estate developers that use less and better materials
Circularity
- incentivise people and corporations to undergo circular practices and use circularity-first offerings (e.g. Vinted for clothes etc...)
- Incentivise refurbishment/reselling over buying again
- Gamify upcycling, e.g. provide benefits to corporations that take their products back at the end of their lifetime to dispose of them/upcycle them. Similarly, provide benefits to corporations selling products that are mostly made of recycled material
- Push people to use subscription based circularity platforms
End of the value chain
- use computer vision software at waste collection facilities to optimise the dividing of waste into the right categories
I work with startups so would be happy to make some introductions to the ones that are tackling some of the above challenges