bifa Umweltinstitut: City of Regensburg opts for citizen participation

The City of Regensburg has set itself the goal of collecting kitchen and food waste from households and subjecting it to high-quality recovery. In October 2017, a city-wide bring system will therefore be introduced.

City-wide means that approx. 2,000 collection containers for kitchen waste will be set up across the whole city, in which the citizens can then dispose of their biowaste. The survey carried out by bifa and AU Consult for Regensburg showed that the introduction of a city-wide bring system for kitchen waste with an appropriately large number of container locations would achieve roughly the same ecological result as the introduction of a city-wide biobin, but would cause only half the costs. However, for the city council it was decisive for the system to be individually tailored to the special basic conditions in Regensburg.

In a city-wide bring system the collection bins are not located directly on the household premises, but at a distance of max. 100 m. Suitable locations prove to be recycling islands, green waste collection points and, depending on the building situation, street corners or rear courtyards in the area of the old city.

The challenge in introducing the system is now to find the numerous standing areas for the bring system bins and to achieve appropriate acceptance among the population. For this reason the new collection offer will be brought to the residents' attention through intensive PR work and they will also be involved in the location selection. bifa, together with AU Consult, not only drew up the survey and concept for the bring system, but are also assisting the city with the citizen participation and the PR work.