Recyclable Materials Management

In all 13 Municipalities of the Western Macedonia region, a Separation at Source program is implemented for recyclable materials and packaging materials: Paper, Plastic, Glass & Metal.

For this program is in force since 2009, a cooperation agreement of DIADYMA SA, with the Collective System of Alternative Management “Recycling” of the Hellenic Recovery Recycling Corporation (HRRC).

The difference compared to the rest of the country, lies in the fact that in the Region of Western Macedonia, has been designed and implemented since 2009, a program of Recyclable Materials, with four distinct recycling bins, one separated for each material:

• the blue bin for paper
• the light blue bin for plastic
• the yellow bin for glass
• the red bin for metal

In all the Municipalities there are in the present phase, placed about 5,000 recycling bins in total (1,700 blue bins for Paper, 1,300 light blue bins for Plastic, 1,000 yellow bins for Glass and 1,000 red bins for Metal). Each location, with more than one recycling bin, constitutes a separated Recycling Location (there are a total of about 1,500 Recycling Locations throughout the Region). The goal is in the coming years, a total of 3,000 Recycling Locations will be developed, with each position having a separated recycling bin for all 4 basic recyclable materials (Paper, Plastic, Glass & Metal).

The Municipalities are responsible for the collection of the recycling bins. The bins are serviced on a regular weekly basis, while the collection is done with separate itineraries, to maximize the purity of the recovered materials. DIADYMA supports the project of collecting recycling bins on behalf of the Municipalities. At the present stage, following program contracts between Municipalities and DIADYMA, DIADYMA serves with mechanical collection services about 50% of the installed recycling bins.

All the separately (per stream of material) collected Recyclable Materials, from the respective bins, are end up by each Municipality to the respective Local Waste Management Unit (LWMU), to upload them and store them pending their transfer to the Recycling Material Sorting Center (RMSC). The transshipment of the recycling materials from the garbage trucks for the collection of the recycling bins is done in special garbage containers, with or without a compression system.

A the RMSC, where the collecting recycling materials from the separation at source system end up, an extra sorting of materials (micro-manual sorting for the removal of foreign materials) and their packing or direct loading in special waste bins, ready for shipment to recycling-recovery units.

The separation at source program implemented in the Western Macedonia region is not related to the program of blue recycling bins that is implemented in the rest of the country. The Recyclable Materials collected in Western Macedonia from the recycling bins of 4 streams (Paper, Plastic, Glass & Metal), have a purity that exceeds 95%. From the micro-sorting in RMSC per material stream, packaging materials emerge again, which are also utilized with the right stream. Therefore, the unusable residues of RMSC, which are eventually end up to landfill, are in very small quantities and in percentage around 2%.