Blockchain and wearable RFID for certified management of point collection

The mayor of the first municipality in the world who adopted the Blockchain of waste speaks: beginnings, benefits and application
MILAN, 8 November 2019 - Partitalia srl, an Italian company in the ICT sector from 2001, produces and markets smart cards, tags and RFID readers throughout Europe.

At Ecomondo, the circular economy fair in Rimini, during the event "Blockchain and wearable RFID for certified management of punctual collection", which was also attended by Marco Di Marco, President of the Meditchain Consortium and Paolo Perego, Researcher of the Polytechnic of Milan, the case of the Municipality of Miglianico, in the province of Chieti, was presented: the first in the world to adopt the Blockchain of waste.

Blockchain and wearable RFID for certified management of punctual collection - Partitalia stand at Ecomondo

The beginnings

In the 2015 and 2016 years, the Municipality has decided to adhere to the European 'polluter pays' principle, with the aim of saving virtuous citizens and making those less virtuous pay right. The meeting with Partitalia took place in this period.

So it all started: the city council organized itself, information and communication campaigns were done to encourage waste collection and, at the same time, the citizens of Miglianico received the tubs to which an RFID tag was applied ready to be read from the "Discovery Mobile" bracelet during collection operations.

An important passage, described as such by Fabio Adezio, Mayor of Miglianico: "In the 2016, when we arrived at the exact tariff, we decided to measure all the fractions, not only - as is often done - the damp and the undifferentiated, but all the fractions, because we felt that the solution was to do a sort of management control on the contributions. If a citizen gives me only the dry and undifferentiated fraction it means that he is not making a good collection and I, with punctual control, realize it and report the anomalous behavior ».

The economic benefits for the Municipality

Defined as a “virtuous municipality”, Miglianico is a village of 4900 inhabitants that today has reached almost 85% of the amount of separate waste collection, passing from around 900 thousand euros to around 660 thousand euros of total waste collection costs.
At the delivery of the tubs, on 2200 utilities Tari, 100mila euros of total evasion were discovered, which, divided for five years, quantified 20 thousand euros per year in fees to be recovered.

Furthermore, the introduction of point collection at Miglianico has saved 21% to virtuous citizens. To reward them, every citizen has been given a water card, which allows them to take one liter of water for free every day. An initiative that helps to reduce the contribution of the plastic fraction.

The Blockchain for waste collection

From here, we have moved on to the application of the Blockchain. To make us better understand the "why" and the "how", the mayor adds: "We record the waste collection transactions on a certified and authenticated instrument and transfer this information. We are certain that the transaction we transfer to our systems is inviolable, so the citizen knows that it is his contribution.

The next step that will be implemented in a very short time is to give the citizen also an evidence of his contributions, in such a way that the citizen can have a feedback ". In this way, the management of waste and data related to Tarip users has been optimized. Through the RFID technology and the Partitalia Blockchain, the Municipality of Miglianico was able to have a geo-referenced datum available, with reference to the date and time of the collection, precise elements per unit and per conferment.

So thanks to this control, it was possible to build a precise trend: in fact, every inhabitant of the municipality produces 75 kg of waste per capita daily. But not only that, continues Adezio: "Simply by analyzing the management of the provision we could realize if someone is occupying houses with extra people. With this technology, which is safe and certified, we would also like to analyze everything else ".