Territory type: Region

Population: 214000

Organisation/Company: Intermunicipal Waste Management Service of Greater Porto

Type of organisation: Public authority

Link to website: https://www.lipor.pt/en/

Porto is Portugal’s second largest city, located on the northwest coast of the country. LIPOR manages, recycles and recovers 520,000 tonnes per year of municipal waste, produced by 1 million people in the 8 municipalities in the Greater Porto region. Since the foundation of LIPOR in 1982, biowaste valorisation, specifically food and garden waste, has been a priority and is aligned with the waste hierarchy: prevention, recycling at source and separate collection and biowaste recovery. LIPOR’s composting plant receives carefully selected biowaste from separate collection, producing a certified, premium quality compost. This rigorous quality process implies that the challenge to scale-up biowaste collection to the whole region, and the construction of a new biowaste treatment plant, must fulfill demanding input criteria and the production of great quality bio-based products. In terms of techno-economic viability, LIPOR aims to tackle the poor economics of biowaste valorisation (operational costs vs. revenue) and develop a new waste tariff model, that values proper waste separation.