Miglianico, the municipality that uses the blockchain for waste

The case of the Municipality of Miglianico, which uses blockchain for waste disposal, was presented at Ecomondo. 

In Rimini, during the event “Blockchain and wearable RFID for a certified management of waste collection on time”, the Mayor of Miglianico, Fabio Adezio, illustrated the project of the municipality of Abruzzo in the province of Chieti, developed in collaboration with Partitalia Srl, an Italian company that produces and markets smart cards, tags and RFID readers. 

The Mayor said that since 2015 the Municipality decided to adhere to the European principle “those who pollute pay”, which foresees to make virtuous citizens save money and make less virtuous ones pay more. 

At that point, the city council launched information and communication campaigns to encourage waste collection and, thanks to the collaboration with Partitalia, an RFID tag was applied to the waste collection baskets distributed to citizens. These tags can be read during collection operations with a special bracelet, called Discovery Mobile. 

In this regard, the Mayor said: 

“In 2016, we decided to measure all the types of waste, not only – as is often done – the organic and the non-recyclable, because we felt that the solution consisted in making a sort of management control on the contributions. If a citizen only provides the dry and undifferentiated waste, it means that they are not carrying out proper disposal and, thanks to precise control, the anomalous behaviour can be detected and reported”.

Concerning the use of the blockchain he added: 

“We record waste collection transactions on a certified and authenticated tool and transfer this information. We are certain that the transaction that we transfer to our systems is inviolable, so the citizen knows that it is their contribution. The next step that will be implemented very soon is to give the citizen evidence of their contributions so that they can receive feedback”.

In this way, thanks to RFID and blockchain, the Municipality of Miglianico was able to collect geo-referenced data about the date and time of collection, as well as precise elements for units and for conferment. 

As a result, it has been calculated how much waste each inhabitant produces every day and, by analysing future deliveries, the Municipality will be able, for example, to see if someone occupies the houses with more people than declared. 

Miglianico is a virtuous country of 4,900 inhabitants that has reached almost 85% of the share of differentiated collection, going from about 900,000 euros to about 660,000 euros of total expenditure for the collection of waste, saving 21% to virtuous citizens. 

They were also rewarded with a water card that allows withdrawing one litre of water free per day forever.