Recycling, waste management and urban vegetable gardens

Waste management is an issue which several technical, technological but also social and cultural factors contribute to make complex, while the concentration of waste production in big cities mainly gives it an urban and metropolitan dimension. Remarkable difficulties can be found in the scarce motivation of the citizens to actively participate in the process of trash separation and collection as well as in the dislike they feel towards the systems and facilities dedicated to waste processing. This article reports a research on this subject carried out at the University of Naples thanks to a scientific cooperation agreement with the Dutch multinational company Còrio. The verified thesis showed the existence of a close relationship between direct and tangible motivations and the users’ attitude to trash separation: the results were significantly above those expected to be obtained through coercive methods or, even worse, through the promise of an abstract general benefit. The above-mentioned research also brought to the implementation of a prototype made up of a playful but at the same time educational urban vegetable garden of around 800 sq m with a virtuous management system of organic household waste. The experiment, named Orto in Campania, showed the real effectiveness of the proposed solutions with a strong motivational value for the citizens’ involvement but also the mutability of it both in well-established and in new urban areas. The success was so huge that this installation, intended as temporary, is still on plane after more than five years