A global effort to combat climate change.

Landfills in the country were emitting more than 4 million metric tons of greenhouse gases per year, making the pursuit of a zero-waste Chile more urgent than ever. Much of it was methane, which has a global warming potential more than 20 times that of carbon dioxide when in the atmosphere. The GHGs were threatening Chile’s citizens as well as its ability to meet its Paris Agreement pledge.

The country and its longstanding environmental partner, Canada, wanted to collaborate on a Canada-Chile infrastructure project, which is a sustainable waste management program that would be less harmful to people and the environment. The countries, which had been fighting climate change together since the 1997 Chile-Canada Agreement on Environment Cooperation, aimed to innovate Chile’s waste streams. For Canada, the opportunity to establish a low-carbon economy and contribute to the global cleantech revolution aligned squarely with its pledge to invest $2.65 billion in global environmental projects by 2021.

Based on proven waste management competencies in Canada as well as broad sector environmental and regulatory expertise in Chile, the countries brought our specialists on board to overhaul the existing waste management model.

To support the Canada-Chile infrastructure project, Chile brought Arcadis’ sustainability experts on board to create Reciclo Orgánicos, a long-term program to mitigate greenhouse gases and recycle organic waste.

 

Recycling organics into compost and generating alternative energy for a zero-waste Chile.

The project team saw incredible potential for treating organics as a resource rather than a waste stream. Composting, anaerobic digestion, and landfill gas capture would turn organics into assets for agriculture, energy production, and fuel for transportation. Our engineers helped the countries design a plan for a sustainable, low-carbon future called Reciclo Orgánicos. The program had four core mandates:

Technology deployment: helping Chile mitigate GHG emissions from the municipal waste sector with guidance around purchasing, designing, and implementing new composting facilities, anaerobic digestors, and landfill gas capture systems. 

Monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV): creating a robust and transparent MRV mechanism for measuring GHG emissions mitigated because of the program. This includes developing protocols for funding blockchain development of GHG reductions and using the MRV to monitor gas reductions that eventually will be traded as internationally transferred mitigation outcomes. 

Capital leveraging and co-financing: helping the Canada-Chile infrastructure project identify potential investors from the public and private sectors as well as international development institutions supporting GHG-reduction projects. 

Community engagement: engaging municipalities and raising awareness within Chile about climate change to create public buy-in. Arcadians helped guide public outreach and supported training sessions for municipal staff using in-person and online classes. 

With buy-in from citizens, businesses, and municipal leaders, our sustainability experts were able to apply unique waste management improvements based on an area’s needs, goals and organic recycling potential. More than 30 communities are directly or indirectly receiving support, such as source-separation of organic residues for composting or anaerobic digestion and extraction of landfill gas for clean energy production.

The program acts as a decision-support system for municipalities to develop organic management projects. These projects are spread across a variety of geographies, climatic conditions, and population sizes, and each requires a customized approach to mitigating GHG emissions.

Early projects included installing a new composting plant to manage organic residues in Santa Juana and processing discarded organics using aerated static piles and GORE® Cover Technology in Talca. In San Felipe, Reciclo Orgánicos is collaborating with a private landfill operator and the local municipality leaders to develop a 2-megawatt landfill gas power plant. Each success helps the team strengthen the team’s ability to evaluate and implement optimal solutions for mitigating GHG emissions from Chile’s municipal solid waste management system.

In the third year of program implementation, the team added MRV protocols to track and maximize landfill gas recovery. A blockchain pilot was also launched to optimize digital MRV. The first stage assessed monitoring, planning, and data systems for collection volumetric flow rates, gas composition analysis, combustion device and operation, and combustion efficiency. Looking ahead, it will examine other relevant information systems such as back-end networks, data quality assurance and controls, Internet of Things connections, security systems, and external data sources. The pilot was completed in March 2021.