Every piece of equipment repaired is one less piece of waste in a cycle that the city is called upon to close

26/09/2024

A coffee machine that has stopped working? A table with a broken leg? The solution may, after all, lie in each individual’s hands, just as it is, starting today, in the hands of Vítor and Bruno. Every day, the technicians from Porto Ambiente will be at the new (albeit repurposed) Eco Porto, located at Ecocentro da Prelada, giving a new life to products we no longer use because we consider them to be damaged. One step further, one less waste item, on the ‘path we all must take’ towards effective and ‘absolutely necessary and inevitable’ economic circularity.

Open to the whole community, the City Circularity Centre was born out of the need to find a solution for the 97 tonnes of waste electrical and electronic equipment, 336 tonnes of discarded objects, and 837 tonnes of wood waste that the Municipality of Porto collected last year alone.

‘We throw away products without bothering to recycle them and this leads to an excessive use of materials and resources that the world doesn’t have,’ emphasises the Deputy Mayor. At the presentation of Eco Porto, the day before National Sustainability Day, Filipe Araújo pointed out that reusing 10% of these materials would prevent the emission of more than 300 tonnes of CO2 equivalent into the atmosphere.

In another dimension, this reuse has the potential to create approximately seven jobs.

Concerned about ‘the amount of material in such good condition’ that was discarded and the ‘constant waste we see on a daily basis’, the Councillor for the Environment and Climate Transition considers the transition to an increasingly circular economy ‘absolutely necessary and inevitable’, calling on everyone to be involved.

Literally. This is because, more than just a workshop for repairing household appliances, furniture, and computers, Eco Porto aims to be a training and capacity building space where anyone can learn how to restore objects and pieces of equipment that seem beyond repair at home.

But the circle only truly closes when these repaired items are given away, absolutely free of charge, to someone who can put them to a new use: social organisations or any resident or company that shows an interest in them.

In addition to the environmental benefits that this greater reuse of materials and reduction in waste production brings, Eco Porto also offers economic advantages, both by allowing products to be obtained for free and by ‘enhancing the creation of new businesses and providing visibility to existing ones’, related to the circular economy.

Finally, Filipe Araújo says that the project also encourages new, more sustainable consumption habits. ‘This is a path that we all have to take, leading us to the goals we have as a city’, emphasised the Deputy Mayor.

For the Councillor for the Environment and Climate Transition, ‘this was the tool we were missing and that can be absolutely transformative in how we address the issue of circularity’.

‘It is our obligation as a society to allow others to benefit from these materials’, says Filipe Araújo, because ‘if we continue with the mindset of a society that throws everything away, the world won’t stand it. And the city of Porto can set an example’.

Beyond the physical walls – also made from reused containers – Eco Porto is available on a digital platform where residents and organisations can find out which materials/products have been repaired and are available for donation.

Until the end of the year, activities are planned to promote this circularity, including workshops on furniture restoration, training sessions for computer repair, repair cafés, a second-hand market, and thematic workshops.

The Porto City Circularity Centre is open from Monday to Friday, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and on Saturdays and Sundays from 8.30 a.m. to 1 p.m.. Don’t forget that the Municipality collects your items free of charge.