“Sei Toscana, as manager of the collection services of the Southern Tuscany Ato, having taken note of the will of the municipal administration of Siena, has taken action to follow up on the requests made. The manager, however, deems it useful to highlight some points of attention”; thus begins an intervention by Sei Toscana regarding the suspension of the 6Card for domestic users established by the Administration of the Municipality of Siena (go to the article).
“The path started in 2019 in the municipality of Siena, despite the interruptions due to the pandemic – continues Sei Toscana -, saw citizens involved in an unprecedented information and awareness process, which made the community more aware in terms of shared responsibility and environmental awareness.
The results are positive not only in terms of use of the service (over 21,000 users served by roadside collection regularly use the 6Card), but also and above all in terms of separate collection and quality of materials which, although improvable, are functional to the recycling processes .
In this regard, it is necessary to highlight how, in the space of a few years, Siena has seen the percentages of separate waste collection grow by around 20 points (from 43% in 2019 to 62% in 2022), becoming the most virtuous capital of the Tuscany ATO South. Not only that, from the product analyzes that Sei Toscana periodically carries out on a sample basis, the quality of the materials collected appears to be far superior to other similar realities.
Results achieved also thanks to the promotion of targeted corrective actions towards those users who, as found by the specific information on disposals collected through access to the bins with 6Card, had behaved improperly in the management of their waste. We fear that “free” access to the bins, without traceability, could lead to a worsening of the quality of the materials collected, with related problems related to waste disposal, both at an environmental and cost level.
In addition to the good results obtained from an environmental point of view – explains Sei Toscana -, the need to have a nominative tool for waste disposal (the 6Card, precisely) has contributed to and stimulated many users who are not registered with the TARI register, but in fact domiciled in the municipal territory of Siena, to regularize their position, thus also allowing a significant recovery of resources for the municipal coffers.
Last but not least, the suspension of controlled access effectively blocks the preparatory path to the introduction of punctual pricing, an objective that the previous Administration, also in line with what was established by the Service Review Plan approved by the 104 Administrations of the ATO in January 2022, had taken over as a cornerstone.
The introduction of waste collection tracking systems represents a necessary evolution in the management of collections and urban hygiene services, at a local, regional and national level. It is enough to remember how the introduction of user recognition systems (with card, with key, app, door-to-door home collections, etc.) already constitutes a choice undertaken by many small, medium and large municipalities, even outside the context managed by Sei Toscana (such as, for example, Florence) and an obligatory path for the purpose of achieving the objectives of application fairness which are the basis of the application of punctual pricing.
Certainly, the adoption of new, more advanced collection systems also involves having to deal with problems related to the ease of use of the tools and the necessary adaptation of citizens’ behavior, the latter element being of central importance for achieving the objectives set for the basis of the adoption of any collection model you decide to adopt.
On this – concludes Sei Toscana in his speech on the suspension of the 6Card in Siena – it is important to highlight that, as a manager, we are well aware of the critical issues and margins for improvement, just as we are well aware of the corrective actions and improvement proposals to be carried out . Among these, certainly, the use of the new latest generation collection containers, such as those adopted, to remain within the province of Siena, in the municipalities of Valdelsa and Val d’Orcia and in which the company plans an economic investment important for the purchase as proposed by the industrial plan of Sei Toscana and approved in the Service Review Plan by the Assembly of Municipalities belonging to the Southern Tuscany Area.”
