Region and focus area
Ghent is a municipality in Flanders and the capital city of the East Flanders province. It is the third largest city of Belgium. With its 259.083 inhabitants and average population density of 1.659 inhabitants/km², it is among the most urbanised cities in Flanders.
Destelbergen is an autonomous, neighbouring municipality of Ghent. It is a municipality with a strong urbanized centre in combination with a lot of open space. The vicinity of Ghent has an important impact on its demographic evolution, mobility and spatial development.
For their waste management, both municipalities rely on the inter-municipal organisation IVAGO, which serves both areas.
The focus area covers Ghent and Destelbergen.
Waste Flow
Flanders has a long history of Waste Management. Since 1981 a combination of instruments moved waste management further up in the waste hierarchy, promoting prevention and material recovery. The ongoing ambition to reduce the total amount of (residual) waste, necessitates municipalities to look for eco-innovative solutions. In the focus area, VFG-waste still represents a considerable amount of the residual waste of households.
During the interviews conducted with stakeholders in the region and the PULL workshops, the importance of organic waste value chains has been confirmed and further specified. Food Waste was pinpointed as a primary concern.
Key priorities
The following key priorities for bio-waste management in the focus area were identified.
- Commit retail, catering and households to prevent and reduce food waste or provide valuable destinations through reuse.
- Take all necessary measures to maximize the value of the organic material, taking into account the needs in the focus-area.
- More households, SME’s and catering businesses participate in the separate collection of organic waste.
- Created opportunities for innovative Circular Economy initiatives to develop into fully-fledged solutions.
- Legislation and regulations make it possible to collect kitchen and food waste together with VFG.
- There is an efficient collection system for organic waste in the region.