A new selective collection service will visit 33 agricultural cooperatives in Catalonia between February and April to collect and manage obsolete, expired or discontinued phytosanitary products.
The Department of Climate Action and the Catalan Waste Agency plan to collect about 40 tons of products. They also assume the cost of the service, about 140,000 euros.
The director of the Waste Agency of Catalonia, Isaac Peraire; the general director of Agriculture and Livestock, Elisenda Guillaumes and the supply manager of the Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives of Catalonia (FCAC), Josep Lluís Escuer have presented in Lleida the new service to facilitate farmers who can sell these products . With the change in state regulations, the possession of these products can lead to administrative penalties starting at 3,000 euros.
The second objective is that these phytosanitary products are treated correctly and do not end up in the wrong containers.
The new service continues a pilot test that was carried out in 2021 in 10 Catalan cooperatives. They planned to collect 4 tons of phytosanitary products and ended up collecting 17 with an amount of more than 20,000 euros.
“The success” of the initiative has led the Government to extend the test to all of Catalonia so that agricultural holdings can adapt to the regulations and “to be together with the sector with all the new impositions we have,” explained Guillaumes.
