The emergency produced by the Covid-19 pandemic, also in 2021, required Iren Group to make a greater commitment in the field of environmental services with significant interventions to support citizens.
The Environment Points (Punti Ambiente) remained always open for the distribution of materials needed for the sorted collection of waste. Residents’ access was restricted, ensuring the distance foreseen by the regulations, and the counters were equipped with all health safety devices (plexiglass, disinfectant dispensers, masks and gloves for operators).
During the year, the Group continued to promptly acknowledge and manage the requests of the Municipalities to postpone the deadlines of the TARI payment notices, staggering them both for domestic users and for non-domestic users.
In order to meet the needs caused by the health emergency, specific home collection services of unsorted waste have been arranged, street washing services have been intensified, as well as the cleaning of play areas in parks and urban hygiene. In particular, at the request of Public Administrations and through protocols agreed with regional bodies, ad hoc services have been set up for waste collection, including doubling the frequency of emptying unsorted waste bins and the pick-up at the floor collection service for families with Covid- 19 positive cases and in the case of objective and proven inability of people to leave their apartments or private property to take out the container or reach the nearest street bin. Residents were able to request the service through the Group’s waste management contact centre, from which they received instructions on how and when to display their waste at the front door for collection by the environmental operators. For the management of the waste, a collection kit was provided consisting of black bags and a vademecum containing the necessary instructions for the new collection methods during the first collection.
The activity of the contact centre operators has also allowed managing all the calls from the subjects who needed dedicated waste collections for positivity to Covid-19 or quarantine.
Tariff system
The TARI tax is composed of:
- a fixed part, determined by the cost of sweeping, general costs, part of the cost of personnel and other essential components of the cost of the service, relating in particular to depreciation and administrative costs;
- a variable part related to the quantity of waste conferred, the service provided, and the management costs.
The TARI is applied to utilities, taking account of the surface area occupied and, for domestic utilities, also of the number of family members. With the TARI, Iren Group invoices its service to the Municipality and the Municipality issues payment notices to the users. In calculating the TARI, the Municipality takes account of the VAT that it has to pay, which is why, in the tax applied to users, the VAT is not expressed but included in the tax itself.
Social tariffs are not provided for by the general legislation of the TARI. At a regulatory level, every Municipality may include favourable conditions or reduction clauses in favour of certain categories of users.
The average tariff for waste collection and hygiene services in Turin, La Spezia, Vercelli, Parma, Piacenza and Reggio Emilia is in line with previous years. The table below provides the average TARI for 2021 for the main municipalities served.
| Type of domestic users - Year 2021 |
Average TARI by provincial capital (Euro/year) |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| La Spezia | Parma | Piacenza | Reggio Emilia | Turin | |
| 1 member families | 151.01 | 132.07 | 121.95 | 168.37 | 131.54 |
| 2 member families | 195.84 | 215.09 | 216.17 | 253.95 | 246.53 |
| 3 member families | 208.84 | 247.57 | 270.49 | 334.52 | 294.69 |
| 4 member families | 220.42 | 288.13 | 298.54 | 382.64 | 326.63 |
| 5 member families | 232.12 | 336.78 | 358.06 | 430.41 | 381.69 |
| ≥ 6 member families | 244.35 | 380.14 | 405.58 | 455.99 | 433.72 |
Safety of environmental services
The Group has developed performance monitoring tools such as environmental impact assessment, analytical controls, internal audits and legislative compliance checks, aimed at monitoring performance also in terms of sustainability and environmental protection. 70% of products and services in the environment sector undergo health and safety impact assessments of the customer.
Acoustic impact
In all the areas managed, sound level checks are periodically carried out on waste collection, street sweeping and collection centres. In particular, in the waste collection sector, the Group is adopting new methods with vehicles with low acoustic impacts, such as electric vehicles. For waste-to-energy plants periodic acoustic monitoring campaigns are carried out. To date, the results of the investigations conducted show that the limits have been respected.