Experiences of Czech municipalities with introducing biowastecollection

Biowaste represents a notable portion of municipal solid waste in the Czech municipalities. New legislation requires municipalities to provide collection and separation option for this waste fraction for all municipalities since 2015. In our study we examined the experiences of the Czech municipalities with dealing with waste fraction in years prior to the new legislation. We have used a combination of survey and personal interviews with the local authorities in order to collect information about their ways of dealing with biowaste and their overall experiences with it. Our sample contains data from more than 500 municipalities and cover years 2009-2014. Based on the responses we have identified that the preferred measures and experiences are rather different, with notable factors being the municipal size, resp. the dominant housing structure. While small municipalities perceived often little to no benefit in the new requirements, as they were already used to utilize their biowaste themselves, larger municipalities saw them as more beneficial. Among the positives was mostly reduced amount of residual municipal waste, often resulting in lower overall costs of the system, as biowaste treatment is usually notably cheaper, as well as the overall satisfaction of the people with the new system. But this usually takes some time (a year or two), until the people get accustomed to the new system, understand it and cooperate with it in order to produce visible and usually positive results.