Waste and The 15 Minute City Concept: Innsbruck
The 15-minute city model aims to improve urban sustainability by making essential services accessible within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. Although widely discussed as a solution for resilient and sustainable urban planning, the framework’s approach to waste management remains underdeveloped, representing a critical gap in achieving comprehensive sustainability.
Three interviews were conducted with waste and circularity experts on the topic of the 15-minute city concept and waste in Innsbruck.
Participants:
Micheal Deflorian: Deflorian advises the City of Innsbruck on climate-neutral city planning, including blue-green infrastructure and waste management. With an academic background in the circular economy, he was selected for his insights into urban planning decisions and their economic implications. His expertise provided valuable context on how Innsbruck manages its waste, and the economic challenges associated with implementing new waste strategies.
Reinhard Oberguggenberger: Oberguggenberger has worked in Innsbruck’s recycling sector for 17 years. In addition to overseeing the management of the recycling facility, he has been involved in citizen education and activism to improve waste sorting and collection. His expertise helped provide an overview of Innsbruck’s waste management system, particularly in terms of collection, sorting, and public engagement.
Martina Wolf-Kuntner: Wolf-Kuntner is the executive director of Ho&Ruck, a repurposing non-profit organization connected to Noamal, a national network of circular economy initiatives, which is further linked to SURFACES, an EU-wide network focused on waste repurposing. Her insights were particularly valuable in understanding alternative waste strategies, including the reuse and repurposing of materials.
Waste in Innsbruck goes through a collection and sorting process, where it is either composted, recycled, landfilled, or shipped off to be incinerated in Linz, Austria. Each day, two collection trucks service 30–40 stations, amounting to approximately 6,000 tons of waste per year, excluding biological waste. Additionally, citizens of administrative district, Bezirk Innsbruck-Land, can request direct household pick-ups for large waste collection up to twice a year. The collecting system as it stands fits within the 15-minute city concept in the city of Innsbruck since there is a pick service that collects the waste within a 15-minute radius of the homes. However, there are notable differences between urban and rural areas in this regard. Implementing 15-minute city practices is more challenging in rural areas due to accessibility constraints, requiring communities to be more self sufficient. For instance, independent home composting is more common in rural households than in urban ones, operating separately from centralized waste systems (T. Oberguggenberger, personal communication, January 9, 2025). This is not only due to limited access to centralized composting facilities but also because composting provides a valuable source of fertilizer for local use.
Waste that is not composted, recycled, or sent to a landfill is transported approximately 300 km to Linz, Austria, for incineration (T. Oberguggenberger, personal communication, January 9, 2025). This strategy will be discussed further in a separate section below. Regarding landfill waste, only industrial materials such as sand or ashes—classified as "good waste" due to their lack of chemical reactivity—are legally permitted for disposal (Oberguggenberger, personal communication, January 9, 2025). To incentivize recycling, Innsbruck now has a bottle deposit system so that people can get money back for returning the waste themselves. With this change, the city of Innsbruck expects there to be a decrease in plastics through their system, therefore leading to the new 2025 policy that will collectively deposit plastics and metals (F. Deflorian, personal communication, December 16, 2024; T. Oberguggenberger, personal communication, January 9th, 2025). The aim is to decrease plastic waste and maximize bin utilization (Oberguggenberger, personal communication, January 9th, 2025). Additionally, the technology for sorting metal and plastic is quite robust, making it more efficient to organize trash in that way.
Oberguggenberger emphasizes that effective waste management must start at the household level. Currently, 30% of biodegradable waste ends up in residual household waste instead of being composted, including garden waste, paper, and cardboard (Oberguggenberger, personal communication, January 9, 2025). This issue is further supported by a study indicating that Mixed Solid Waste (MSW) contains about 18% of food wastes and 14% of paper and cardboards. Thus, close to one third of the MSW is potentially biodegradable (Lopes et al., 2019). To address this, two members of his department visit households in Innsbruck to promote proper waste sorting, though success has been limited. Another strategy focuses on integrating recycling and waste management education in schools, ensuring that awareness extends into households as well (Oberguggenberger, personal communication, January 9, 2025).
Finally, repurposing is gaining attention as a waste management strategy in Innsbruck, though it remains a small part compared to recycling and incineration. The city is part of the Noamal network supporting repurposing initiatives. In the second-hand clothing sector, only 1-2% of used clothes are sold in Innsbruck’s stores, while most are recycled, repurposed, or shipped to low-income countries (T. Oberguggenberger, personal communication, January 9, 2025). Ho&Ruck, a second-hand store, plays a key role in reuse by accepting and reselling donated items like furniture, clothing, and appliances. Unsold items are donated, recycled, or disposed of properly, extending their lifespan and reducing landfill waste (M. Wolf-Kuntner, personal communication, January 16, 2025). Beyond second-hand stores, companies like EGGER contribute to repurposing by transforming old wood into new furniture, reducing waste and supporting a circular economy (T. Oberguggenberger, personal communication, January 9, 2025).
The conclusion was that this would require a "radical change" in the system to not only include the front-end collection part but also the back end of waste treatment into the city’s waste management, which would necessitate a significant initial investment. Such radical change might not be the answer, considering waste collection is already fitting within the 15-minute city concept, and trying to complete the whole waste treatment process within the 15-minute city concept is quite ambitious, especially in a city context. At the same time, supporting other avenues of waste reduction, such as reuse shops like Ho&Ruck is one action point for reducing waste within the 15-minute city.
