Environmental and Social Sustainability of the Proximity Waste Collection System: A Case-Study Evaluation at an Italian Local Scale

In an urban or suburban area, the sustainability of a waste management process is expected to be closely related to the territorial context and the local citizens’ behaviour. From this perspective, the implementation of the peculiar proximity waste collection system in a small town in Central Italy (San Costanzo) was considered. As compared to the previous road collection system in the same municipality, its environmental performance in terms of Source Separation Level (SSL), Waste Generation or Collection Rate (WGR or WCR) and Interception Rate (IR) was evaluated. An original analysis of the citizens’ monthly frequency and of their participation rate both in relation to the setting out of the Unsorted Residual Waste (URW) was also carried out. Following the full implementation of the new waste collection scheme, the SSL achieved almost 79%, the WCR of the URW decreased by about 82% and the most IR values resulted above 83%. From a social point of view, the study further highlighted that, with the new waste collection scheme active, more than 50% of users were accustomed to set out the URW at most 5 times per month and the corresponding participation rate to set out the URW was around 62%.