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The solid waste management public company LIPOR : first recycling company in Portugal.

4. Environment

Waste management

Context

Lipor is a public, solid waste management company in the Porto region, (Portugal) which has been frequently awarded for its CSR strategy. Founded in 1982, Lipor processes 500,000 tons of municipal urban waste per year generated by more than a million people. To do so, the company has developed a waste management integrated system based on multimaterial recovery (plastic, glass, cardboard…), organic recovery and energy recovery. This strategy allowed that in 2015, Lipor had disposal in landfill only 0,01% of its waste.

Objectives

  • Manage waste as a resource
  • Create a sustainable business and energy model for the future
  • Involve stakeholders in the evolution of the business

APPROACH

Lipor’s sustainability approach has several measures:

Waste as a resource

  • Talk to  and educate the citizens about prevention, sorting and recycling of waste
  • Convert waste in the closer landfills into electricity (by biogas)
  • Create multi-material and organic recovery systems
  • Use the sorting, composting and incinerating plants efficiently to reduce waste and convert it to electricity, composts, etc.

Sustainable Business and Energy

  • Encourage and educate the citizens about sustainable consumption
  • Reduce carbon emissions across all business platforms and levels
  • Engage in community projects aimed at the production of a sustainable future and the reduction of the impacts by pollution
  • Create diverse and sustainable agricultural spaces through the use of organic compost, biodiverse crops, the recycling of green waste and the avoidance of non-renewable resources and pesticides

Involvement of stakeholders

  • Identify all relevant stakeholders and their involvement and dependence on Lipor
  • Ensure stakeholders are satisfied and engaged with both Lipor and the community through Lipor’s mission of sustainability
  • Communicate the relevant materials to stakeholders
  • Create a responsive environment within Lipor to communicate with all relevant stakeholders

CONTRIBUTION TO COMPANY PERFORMANCE

  • Electricity saving thanks to photovoltaic panels.
  • #1 business in recycling for Portugal
  • Money saving thanks to a good management of its plant.

Benefits

  • A reduction of Lipor’s carbon emissions by 16.3% between the years 2006 and 2014
  • Distribution of more than 8,500 composters to individuals
  • Production of 352kW of electricity thanks to photovoltaic panels which prevented the production of 91 tons of CO2
  • In 2014, Lipor invested close to 50,000 euros in local community projects (Environmental campaigns, prevention projects, etc.)
  • In 2014, Lipor has won the Innovation for Sustainability Award of the “European Business Awards for the Environment”.
Workforce
200 (2014)
Turnover
33 millions deuros (2014)
Country
Portugal

Contact

Fernando LEITE, CEO, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Mise à jour le 30/05/2016

Creative Commons Attribution This work by Réseau Alliances – World Forum Lille is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.