the informant Camilla Bjerg Pedersen Age About 35 Country of origin

Transcription

1 The type of the informant: Representative of Vestforbraending The interview Date 11 th May 2016 Place Vestforbraending s central building in Glostrup Length 01:20:35 Language of the interview English Interviewers Dace Lasmane, Carina Bendsen, Margareta Birca, The informant: Name Camilla Bjerg Pedersen Age About 35 Gender Female Country of origin Denmark Family type Married, with kids. Occupation Works as leader of consultancy in Vestforbraening, she has 10 people under her administration, 3 that works with communication and 7 technical focused project leaders. They are doing projects with municipalities but also projects at Vestforbraending. If municipalities want to implement something they can hire them and they are paid per hour. She is working for 5,5 years and started as project leader and 2,5 years ago she started her own consultancy and partnership. They are at commune service, they work for municipalities. The municipality where he/she Roskilde lives currently and for how long Municipalities/ Countries where the informant lived before The way we got in touch with We contacted Vestforbraening regarding our project and the informant asked for a meeting. We got reply from the secretary that she will find the right person with whom we should speak with regarding the topic that we are interested in. After a while we got the response that Camilla is the person with whom we should talk with. We contacted Camilla and she agreed for an interview.

2 Carina explaining about our discussion with Ballerup and Rodovre. - There are 4 municipalities, Ballerup, Ishoj, Valensbaek and Fureso who don t have their own waste at the municipality, there are here. We are working for them with all the assignments about waste. But Vestforbraending is 19 municipalities, we are 330 employees, so it s quite big. 270 here. You have 10, do you have more consultance? - No. I have in commune service, no. Then you have here Glostrup and Frederikssund? - Yeah, and something in Hoje Taastrup, but that s small area, we have recycling places both places, and in Frederikssund we prepare paper before it goes shipped, and there s something for food before it goes for BioVaekst. What is happening, is it processed? - No, just collected and in other trucks, but we do that also here in Glostrup and this is brand new because there s so many municipalities who are going to collect food waste, so we have it here also. Here we also have chemical, dangerous waste, so they can give the red box at home and then the garbage men can come and take it. And then we build here a tent where the garbage trucks put them and then we take care of it. You said the red box, where are they taking it? - This is for Rodovre, the citizens gets one of this and put his chemicals in it, and batteries as well, and for small electronic as well. And then you have something specific for food waste? - In some of the places there s something like this (the brown garbage bin). Is that a bucket you have designed? - No, no. It s the green what they have for municipalities right now, but we made an.we asked different companies what is the cost if we buy from them, and one of them is the winner and we have the corn bags to put inside. So they are biodegradable? - Yes, it is, but mainly because is a signal for citizens don t use plastic bags and at BioVaekst is a good think to use corn bags, but now we are going to look for other solutions then BioVaekst, we don t know what we are going to get. This is because (Danish word), we have to do that and probably we are going to find another solution than BioVaekst. But you partially owe it? - We are going to get out of it and that s mainly because we couldn t make an agreement with the partners. We wanted to make it much bigger than it is today because all the municipalities are going to collect waste and that s not enough capacity. But they couldn t find a solution with all the companies, Kara/Noveren, Vestforbraening and Solum to agree on it. So we are going to sell it out. And

3 Kara/Noveren the same. It s a very good solution, but sometimes you have to do something else because of the money and political system. Did you found or searched in other countries for specifically technological solutions? - No, yeah, well we have, and in Sweden they have good solutions. Probably is going to be bio-energy plant and we must see if there s going to be this food waste, because we have Arla in Denmark and during time there s been a big problem with putting food waste (she is referring at using fertilizers from food waste). - They speak something and Danish and then Carina: it s a little similar with when you boil it, it s treated with the water - This is something what we can do but we ll know that after summer. So until summer you will keep on using BioVaekst? - The all year. Because it takes long time to find another solution. But the citizens will not feel any difference, because we are still using this and still using corn bags. Are you working with other companies? - Just a little bit yeah, but is always because the municipalities want us to do. Right now we are going to start with a new contract where are 5 municipalities that are going together and then we have the contract with the waste collectors. And that s something new. It s because Albertslund is not so far. Is it some kind of out source? The process of collecting waste? - Not the collecting waste, we don t do that, we have a contract with the waste collectors. Normally they have their own. But instead of having 5 contracts now we have one and the waste collectors have a bigger area, they can be more optimized. And we have a big project about that, and I have 5 who are working on that. And on 1th June we start. And they are going to have these bins (the one inside). Why did you choose to have a locker cover this one? - Because it can open in 2 ways. When the garbage truck is coming he uses this way and the citizen uses the other way. And it s because the garbage men is going to pick it up this way to take it to the truck. And the citizens have it the other way and it opens right here. So it s service! It s up to municipality if they want this solution, because is more expensive than the normal! Is it produced from recyclable plastic? - Some of them. I cannot remember if it s 5% but it is some of it. But the bins must have some plastic so it s not all recyclable plastic. - And if you see the bins outside, we call them cuba and we want to put some of our collected plastic in the production of these. So we can tell to citizens that when you put something here, it will end up there! Municipalities are hiring truck companies and then they are bringing it whatever here or in other places? - In some other places. Paper is going to steine, some it s going up here where we are reloading and plastic is going to Sweden. Metal is also Stena but is Roskilde probably, and glass is probably Raily, placed in south of Sealand.

4 Is there any other options how you collect? - We have these cuba. And then we want to start with environmental closet but we have solution with chemical, batteries, light balls in some kind of closet that is looking like refrigerator. And Frederikssund started to put that in Netto and Super Brugsen, places like that. And they are doing it in Sweden. We look a lot to Sweden. So that s also an option. - You can take your batteries in the supermarket, the same like you are doing with the bottles. Why Sweden? - Sweden are developed in recycling, and the citizens are similar to Danish. But we can also look to Germany and Holland and depends what we are going to look at. If it s the recycling center then is Holland, Austria and also Sweden, but if it s the bins then is Sweden. They have the 4 chamber bin, we also have that solution for some of our municipalities. Herlev and Lyngby had that solution for their citizens. And it s a good solution. We looked at what should be put in the bin, not how it looks like and how many rooms, so it s important for us that they don t put things together, they don t mix them. And then it doesn t matter how the bin looks like. And then we have the one with 4 rooms and the one with 2 rooms. Isn t this a problem for the trucks? - They cannot empty the same bin, you cannot empty a 4 chamber bin in 2 chamber car. So when the areas are big enough this is not a problem. They need at least one car to collect the waste, so this is not a problem. When the area is small it is a problem, because we don t use the car enough. So we have to design our system with the waste collectors car, but it can be done. In Sweden they have a lot of places where they have 2 of 4 chamber bins. They have this responsibility of producers and that s one reasons why they have different colors for glass, they have green, colored glass, white glass. We don t do that in Denmark. Will that happen in the future? - We don t have to because the plant can separate it and do that for us. - There s municipalities in Julland, they mix things together, plastic and paper, glass and metal. But by separating it for only plastic we get lot more and we just say plastic because who knows what is soft and what is hard. So they come with it and we ll take care of it. and 75% is recycled. Who do you sell it too? - To Sweden, they have a company called, I cannot remember. But you have to put it out in the market and see where is the best price. But for plastic we pay for. Some of the paper we get money for, glass is about 0, and metal depends on aluminium. - The oil price is low so it s not so to sell. So we pay to get right of them. But we have to tell the right story, that is not going to incineration. Dace about Facebook. How do you tell the right story?

5 - It s difficult because people are hearing wrong stories. But they can come up here, we have also school (folkeskole) and kids who are coming here. They see the truck with the 2 chambers, so we try to make as much as possible. Then we have municipalities who arranged the tours for their citizens to BioVaeks or some other places to see what is happening. We have some videos at our web page. But there s always someone who will tell wrong stories, and the waste collectors sometimes. Normally is one person who will, and, what can you do? And there are old stories who still exist, Helsingor and Aarhus Carina telling the story. - Aarhus is almost the same. They collected in colored plastic bags like Vejle and their plant just didn t worked very well, so it s the same story and people remembered. Do you have a standard web site for the communes which you are providing? - It depends on what we want to do. As example Rodovre, we have them and do what they want us to do but we have to consider the all, the other municipalities what they want. We have municipalities who will say we want this system and it s going to mix all. We cannot do that because we decided all together and it will not go the other way. So we do it, but we have to respect the others. Do you have for the four ones the same type of web site? - We do, but now we are going to change it because we got a new site here at Vesforbraending. How do you update the information? - It s very difficult, right now they will going to start this new system on 1th June, except on Ballerup. But next year they will come on the other contract. So next year they will also have 2 chamber bins. - On 1th June, the four, Fureso, Ishoj, Vallensbaek and Albertslund, and then lot of them already started. Herlev was the first, and then Roedovre, Gentofte, Gladsaxe, Broendby. And then Glostrup started on 1th of May. And they bought the bins through us so they can get a good price. We also provided them with that, and the corn bags also. Solum said is your responsibility to educate the citizen, how are you doing it? - Through information, brochures, web site. But people don t think it s interesting. It should be easy. Do you plan to put pictures? - Yes, we do. We plan to put this pictures both on bins and recycling center, so you can put this one, paper is always blue. And you go to the recycling center and it s also blue. Camilla is going to bring the materials - Green is for food waste, and here you have the corn bags. Is that something what citizens can chose? - Yes, well, municipalities decides if they want to give this to citizen, and citizen decide if he wants it because it s inside their kitchen. We decided to not use stickers because stickers will not stay as pretty over time. You have them just in Danish?

6 - Yes, we do have some apartment where we put it in English. Some rented apartment wants to have it just in Danish. It depends on the place and municipality how they want to communicate. And this is how to sort, they will have it from 1th June. But do you have it if someone needs it in Danish? - Some municipalities wants to have it, so we have it but depends on what municipalities wants to have. So there s Ja tak and Nej, Tak and then there s 7 good advices because food waste, you get flies, and it s going to smell. And now it s going to be summer, and hot, and we often do stories in the paper about how to avoid it. in the back side they have the information how often the bins will be collected. And they can get a sms if they want to. So the phone tells you that tomorrow is going to be collected. So they have to have it 20 meters at their place, otherwise it will not be collected. So this is going to tell where your bin must be. For the apartment you have bigger one? - Yes but we go and talk to the people. See what is possible at your place, what you want, who is paying, if you have cube you can have it underground, some of them. A lot of different things that you need to find out before coming with the solution. That s why it doesn t starts at 1th of June, it will take 2 years until we ll finish with the apartments. That s your employees? - Some of them yes. But some of the municipalities are saying you have to have the standard system, bins for the new types and then we make it fit. And this is one way to do it, but the other way it takes lot of time to talk to them because some of them are political and they have to have administration who will decide, and this takes time. Usually we have 3 different types of bins, and underground system, and small islands where some of the fractions are put together. We have food waste nearest to the house and the others can be put further. We also have something like this (showing something). And it costs, but the municipality can say we want this for our citizens then we do this and they had it in Fureso, we had a trial to find out how to collect more of this in the apartments. We have different sorts of this (showing) we have some from Herlev. - Sometimes we can make stickers so they can put on their bins. This is from Hilleroed. And you can see, the 2 chamber. Ballerup, and sometimes you can make this. - Sometimes we work with companies to do the graphic but the information is us. The colors here, as you can see there are not the same colors, these colors are for all municipalities. But Copenhagen also use this colors. - Copenhagen is under us and ARC. Who is making the research? - We tried this quite a lot of times now and we know what works, they always ask how we are going to design the kitchen, because they will sort more. And there s no solution that will fit all. So we helped them with the stickers and took photos how the kitchen may look like. In Albertslund they have a center that goes out, design the kitchen and where to put things. We have trials in areas to see what do you think, how to sort more and how to communicate about it the main thing is that, we think it s exciting, but for people must be easy. They will not read all this information, is not important for them!

7 Is important for them that is an easy solution, is going to be collected and they don t have to worry about it. None of them showed the attitude towards environment? - Some of them do. Danish made the survey about 4 personas and how many percents are concerned about environment and how much don t care. And there s some skepticism that is thinking that is going to be burned anyway. Always is volunteered if you want to have this bins. You can always say that you don t and then call us or municipalities and they come and collect it but you pay the same. You can get rid of the bins, but there s just 10% that don t want it. They just want the normal bin and don t want to sort anything. And we say ok, because if they will going to put the things in the wrong places it s going to mess the work. As example, in paper is important that there s no glass in it. that is important. That s why we are going to put paper with plastic and glass with metal, because how the things react together. So if one citizen doesn t want to sort, it s ok, then to ruin all of it. Some of the fractions are sensitive for errors. What about the cardboard, and how to be sure that you haven t make a mistake? - The waste collectors are having a look and if they can see that, they will put a hanger that means that you did it wrong way but we ll take it, next time we won t. It s a error that we will not take it. It depends if the municipalities wants to do it, or to take it all and then deal with it after. Would you support the fee for not sorting? - We don t do this in this area. In Jutland is easier because of political system. Here is more sensitive. We don t start a new system in the election year. If they will have a bad story this will affect the election. In Jutland is not like this. In Fureso right now there s Venstre that are doing all that they can to do the mayor in bad stance because of the collection system, also they have approved it 2,5 years ago! So, it s not a good way to say you will have a fine because you cannot sort. We are doing the positive way, let s start and inform and help people, and after some time we can say, you cannot do it, you always make errors so we will take the bin and just have the one bin and don t sort. Or have the system with the hangers, as a warning that next time we will not take it with us. Normal is a color system, red, that we haven t toke your bin with us. And in Danish they have this system with colors and your bin is on the sidewalk, and your neighbors can see the bin. So that s also a way to help people how to do. Here is not a solution, is about how sensitive to the system and how much noise we can do. - We don t see a lot of errors. And that s because we decided that plastic is plastic and not hard and soft. Just put all in it and we will sort. We also say that it should be empty so you don t have to clean your glass or metal, you just have to empty it. Citizens also can call if they have any questions? What are the frequent asked questions? - Lot s of questions. There s that are just on the phone and chat with citizens. When they have the new system it's mostly where to put the toothbrush so they have to know fractions and where to put things or not, then they have a hotline to us if they have questions they couldn t answer. But can be that the truck haven t been today, what to do. But we have track system and we can see where the truck is, so we can say don t worry it will come in an hour. Also we have chips in the bins so we can see if it was on the trucks. So if they say they didn t emptied my bin today we can tell that but we

8 can see that it has been! and we can have pictures from the bin and say that they haven t emptied because is overloaded or you made some mistakes. Sometimes they have problems with the 20 meter rule. And some are just calling to complain. Overloaded? - We have to consider the waste collectors work environment. So there s rules how heavy should it be. You have chips in the bins, isn t that expensive? - Yeah, but it provides us with data, the chip is 14 DKK and then you have a system in the cars that talks with ours. But in the long term is an information that is good to have so municipalities wants to pay for that information. Rodovre has this system also. So we know where the bin is, there s a label with barcode. You can see that this bin is at that address so you know where the bins are. The garbage collectors have an app so they can see where the bins are. Something like this is been done in Europe. - That s also a thing that we worked, to put a chip in underground system and in Cubane to know when to come and empty it. There is the new waste plan, how did affected your work? - A lot, if it wouldn t be this lot of municipalities wouldn t started to sort their waste. Are they also trying to come with brochures? - Yes, otherwise they would stay with the old system. What about machines? - We tried to have easy solutions that will not require lot of machines. As example at our place we had the contract with the plants for the plastic, and they have to make the machines better and better. And sometime we could collect the black plastic bag because they couldn t read it at the plants, but now they can. So it s developing fast right now. What does it means waste for you? - For me it s important to think about the environment and society and the future for the kids. I have a work that makes sense for me and it s important! It has to be easy for me at home. I haven t got a lot of time to sort the waste so it s important to be easy. I live in Roskilde and they have recycling centers that are opened 24 hours, and my husband thinks that s fantastic because he can go there after kids are sleeping. And he can just go it and take your time. So it s important to be easy to understand and have a good service. They don t have this sorting system of plastic in Roskilde because they are uncertain if recycling is a good solution and I think that s a shame, because plastic is very good to reuse. They are starting with a new sorting system in Roskilde on 1th of January and they will add 2 chamber bins, but there s no plastic in it. Will they sort organic? - Yes. How the process of decision takes place?

9 - There s a board, and there s mainly mayors that sit at the board. We try to find solutions. So, what s important for us is that we don t sell it to China, it s in Europe. But when it comes to plastic it s ok to send it to Sweden or Germany because the volume of plastic in Denmark is small and we can build one plant while the have already so many. So what is important for us is to know that they can guarantee that minimum 75% is going to be recycled. So we try to measure and put a high standard in it, to tell the right and the good story. Is ok if some it s going to be burned afterwards because we are evolving and we don t know what tomorrow will bring us. Roskilde says they want to have a Danish plant, if they want to recycle plastic, but why? It s not easy to send the plastic to another country, you need Danish, and that s political things, but you can do it and we have done that. We have 2 people here working with agreements and contracts on recycling, and that s the thing they do. One things why the municipalities in Jutland have the mixed plastic is because they have a plant there who is providing solutions for mixed fractions. But we think is not enough one plant who can take mixed fractions. What if that plant is not going to work anymore? So we need some solutions to guarantee that this will work always. All of our municipalities thinks this fraction are good. But Glostrup have not said, they will not have food waste and that s political. Gentofte started with paper and glass and now they have volunteered to the system for metal and plastic. You can have it if you want to but is up to you. We always say to try to make it optional for citizens. They will pay the same but they can decide if they want the bins or not. We have some in the northern part, summer houses, where it was some problems. The roads are so small that you cannot drive a 2 chamber truck. So they have to find something else! But they don t have big volume. So we are saying why to not focus on the big volume and on the citizens and after find something that will be ok for summer houses instead of designing a new system that will fit with summer houses and then we put it on the others. They talked about optic sorting, like in Norway. They have 6 different colored bags, and then you can put it into one bin, and then you have the plant who is sorting the bags. And then when you have all the red bags you have to open them and sort it. But then you make more waste because you produce more plastic bags. But is a good solution if you have problems with rooms and roads. What can be improved in you work? - Political situation is difficult, they are not always nice to each other, and then they decided on one thing and then goes politics and.whoa then we also have challenge because Vest.wants to optimize the system. Every municipalities has one collector, but we can optimize like in Ballerup, Valensbaek, Fureso. And then when Danish said in Frederikssund this is my job to do it and if you take it then I have no job. And why sit 2 people at one place when we have all this and costs less if you centralize it on our place. How many times a year you have meetings with municipalities? - We have lot of different meetings. We have all that collects food waste meet, sometimes we do projects on specific topics and then they say we want to be part of this project then we make specific groups, then we have status meeting where we tell them what have been collected here. And this year we are going to speak about smart cities and open development. If they want to take part at all the meetings it s minimum once a month. And then we do assignments, Rodovre as example, we meet with them when they need it. then we have the communicating web page, but they are busy and we

10 are busy, and it s not easy to do it. we put the documents up there and they can take this ones and send it to print. You mentioned the colleagues, what academic background they have? - I have engineers, I have communication people, I have a psychologist. She is working with communication and how to help people understand what we are doing. We try to design system, so it easy for them to use. At recycle center we have this colors and we try to put that all that s green is here, and all that s blue is here. So we try to design it like in the supermarket. So you put this colors that will help to know what to put where. People come with a big amount of garden waste, for example, so it s ok to have something like this for the plastic but for garden waste it should be easy in and easy out. They are educated in technology and society. And we have service sector at the recycling centers. We know that is good if you can drive a truck but is better if you can talk with people and provide with good service and we can teach you how to drive cars and machines. So we try to reform and make changes at that areas, it s more service. What are the future plans. - Our strategy is to get bigger. We would like to provide with good service. It should be a good price. We are the biggest plant in Denmark but also with the lowest price. So it s important for us to come with good price, good solutions and it s cheap. We are not going to build a new ARC with a ski track because this is the citizens money and we don t have to build something like that to provide them with energy. So we try to optimize our work instead of building a new. That means that we have the lowest price, because of that. Kara/Noveren, Roskilde and ARC have new plants. And there was lot of talks if these companies can go together but we have a very solid plant and economic is very good. But not with the others, and it s difficult to combine it in one because of financial situation. The waste is non-profit but the energy is not the same. I don t know how they are, but we have to go to 0, so we pay to the municipality back, we did last year, 30 millions. You are not doing the same in energy, you just lower the price. How is the collaboration with Kara/Noveren? - More and more, they have a new, so they want to see if they can do the same service as us. We are NOT COMPETING. Their waste is their waste. We don t compete, we try to work together and we try to offer them something, if they have plastic they can get it in our contract, but this is small places where we can collaborate. In the future, if the organic waste is going to Sweden, how the end product is going to return? - We put that in the contract. Right now we are making the contracts, but we want to have a good story for citizens, so as close to home as possible. Are you paying for food waste? - We pay. But the municipalities decided that we should have some money here for that. But right now it s the same price as burning it. - In Denmark we have such good incineration plants that to make it to bio or to put it here and make energy is almost the same. We made the life cycle and depends on what you are looking at, because is

11 almost the same. Is difficult for us to say that it has to be biogas plant because we have such good incineration plants. So you have to do it due to EU? - Yes, we have to do it because in the new plan is that 50% should be recycled and the food waste is a very big fraction, and if you want to reach 50% then you have to take food waste with you. And it s difficult to say that environmental story are the best because we have such good plants in Denmark. Kara/Noveren said that food waste burns bad. - It doesn t because when you mix it with other fractions it makes good for the plant. The plant needs water which is in organic waste. We have to think how to provide the water if we take out the food waste. So people on the plant they have to figure how to do it. So, it does good for the plant. Food is not bad, is bad if it s just food but otherwise is not. Drawing the lifecycle. - We haven t draw that because in some year something goes to Sweden, something to Germany. But at Miljoe-styrelsen they have made the drawings, so you can use their. I think the most exciting thing is that if we can collect plastic now and put it in the cuba, that will be a good story! Like, it started here and ended up here, and if you cannot recycle it than it goes back to recycle. For us like company it will be a very good story.