The annual report from Portugal’s Environment Agency shows that the amount of rubbish produced in the country is rising and that all efforts to increase recycling are not working.
The Portuguese have been producing more garbage over the past four years but the biggest problem is that amount of waste being recycled fell by 50,000 tons last year, a 9% decline.
Each person in Portugal produces an average of 40 kilos of waste per month, per year, producing nearly five million tons of waste annually.
The report describes a "significant decrease" in the recycling figures and attributes it to a fall in the amount of waste placed in recycling bins and a failure of mechanical selection of waste types at recycling centres.
Rui Berkemeier, from the environmental association Zero, confirmed the shortcomings in the recycling system, "Portugal is, in fact, far from the recycling targets for 2020 and very long way off the targets for 2025. There is a whole paradigm shift here that has to be done."
The pre-selection of waste made by citizens and companies fell from 11% to 10% of the total waste produced in the country.
Another conclusion that worries environmental authorities was the consequent increase in waste going to landfill last year, a "reversal of the downward trend that could undermine the defined 2020 objectives in the Strategic Plan for Urban Waste.”
“The Ministry of the Environment continues to promote ecopoints, a system that has many limitations, and door-to-door collections are going to take decades,” according to Berkemeier, who accuses the government of "using tricks" to manipulate the recycling data, counting waste that goes to landfill as ‘recycled.’
The report states that efforts to increase the selective collection of waste for recycling, "have not been properly reflected in the behavior of the population" and if Portugal wants to meet the targets for 2020, "it is urgent to evaluate possible alternatives" to get the Portuguese to separate more waste.
One of the proposals from the Environment Agency is that people "actively participate" in the selection of garbage "and systems continue to be developed that financially encourage those who do this separation and penalising those who do not."
Collecting and treating waste costs €755 million per year, equivalent to more than €75 per citizen but with no national impetus to recycle, this figure is likely to rise and targets will remain unachievable, even with the government fiddling the figures.