The district of Sant Marcel·lí, in Valencia (Spain), has wrapped up the PlastiCircle pilot with a set of positive outcomes and results. A total of 1,462 citizens registered to take part in the pilot, that is 554 families were involved in the PlastiCircle activities. The most intense registration period was the pre-pilot and the first month of the pilot. Street informers played a big role in engaging people to join, by offering them detailed information about the Supermarcelina campaign and its goals, and supporting them with the registration.
The deployment of the smart containers worked according to the plan: 25 smart containers were installed before the pilot started so that participants could get their labels to put on their garbage bags and throw them in those containers, plus all the filling sensors for the containers worked properly. During the pilot, an extra node had to be installed so that the information from the filling sensors in all the containers could be received. The purpose of this information was to use it to improve waste logistics, by contributing to an optimisation of the routes of the collection trucks. Thanks to this optimisation trucks saved 41% of the distance travelled, the time of the collection operations was reduced by 32% and they achieved savings of 22% in their fuel consumption.
Participants involved in the pilot have highlighted the fact that being involved in the pilot has helped them to know how to sort plastic properly. The amount of PET recycled plastic during the campaign could be used to produce 102,000 T-shirts and achieved savings of 5,000 kg of CO2.