First RE-USE center in Croatia and 2 new zero waste municipalities!

Opening up a RE-USE center (photos) is one new important part of an environmentally friendly waste management system in Prelog and the surrounding area that includes door to door separate collection, compost plant, sorting plant and recycling yard. RE-USE center in Prelog consists of two parts: the exhibition-sales area of ​​220 squares and the warehouse-workshop section, also of 220 square meters. Large (bulky waste) such as furniture, footwear and clothing, consumer goods (utensils, books, toys, children's and sports equipment ...) that is usually thrown at the landfill will be repaired or refurbished and reused. The benefits of the center are a high level of work intensity, which requires a greater number of employees, the employment of people with invalidity and, of course, the prolongation of the useful life of the goods by re-use, which reduces environmental pressure.

With the opening of the RE-USE center, the communal company Pre-Kom from Prelog celebrated 15 years of its successful business, and two new municipalities (Belica and Dekanovec) joined to their system by signing the Zero Waste 2020 strategy with plans for 70% of separate collection by 2020. As a reminder, in February last year a Zero Waste conference took place in Prelog, where, at the initiative of Zelena Akcija, city of Prelog and 6 municipalities (Goričan, Donji Kraljevec, Sveta Marija, Donji Vidovec, Donja Dubrava and Kotoriba) with about 25,000 citizens, where the public utility services are carried out by the municipal company PRE-KOM, signed a European 'Zero Waste 2020' Strategy. With this act they joined to Europe best practices map in waste management and have pledged to undertake a number of activities to achieve more goals in the reduction, separate collection and recycling by 2020. Prelog and mentioned municipalities provide door-to-door separate collection for many years now and process separately collected waste in composting and sorting facilities and recycling yards. Zelena akcija made a contribution to the improvement of their system by making a study to verify the results and offer recommendations for further improvement of the system that PRE-KOM now tries to put into practice.

All this has resulted with more than 3 300 000 kilograms of recyclables, more employment and lower monthly bills for citizens in 2016. Households have reduced waste disposal from 98.8 kg to 89.95 kg per capita per year. On a cummulative basis, 53.12% of waste was separately collected and processed. If we're looking only separately collected waste, the percentage is 56.27% of the total amount of waste. This is more than in 2015 (49.58%), the most in Croatia, and far above the Croatian average (17%) but also the European average (44%). With this results PRE-KOM has confirmed its position as a national leader in environmental waste management in Croatia and their status among the best European practice gathered around Zero Waste Europe network.

Zelena akcija will continue its advisory activities within the Council for Waste Management and direct waste management of these municipalities to fulfill even higher goals. As national coordinators of Zero Waste Europe network we invite municipalities to follow the example of first croatian Zero Waste municipalities, as well as examples of more than 350 European cities and municipalities. This includes the integration of Zero Waste strategies in their local waste management plans in order to establish a high-quality waste management systems in accordance with environmental protection and the needs of citizens.

Photos: http://zelena-akcija.hr/hr/multimedija/foto/re_use_prelog

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Marko Košak,
Waste Management Programme, Coordinator
Zero Waste Croatia Network, Coordinator

Zelena akcija / Friends of the Earth Croatia / Zero Waste Croatia