In Tenerife, another initiative aims at improving waste management. It is the “Plan 70/20”, which aims at achieving by 2020 a reuse and recycling rate of 70% of the waste generated in the municipality of Puerto de la Cruz.

Tenerife demonstrates to be an island that is highly committed in waste prevention and management issues. Indeed, in line with the objectives and the actions of the URBAN WASTE project, another initiative has been launched by the municipality of Puerto de La Cruz. It is the “Plan 70/20: Puerto recicla”, an ambitious initiative carried out in collaboration with the Government of Canary Islands, the Cabildo de Tenerife, Ecoembes, ASHOTEL, Ecovidrio, and the Factoría de Innovación Tecnológica (FIT); and managed by the Canarias Recicla Foundation. Its objective is to improve the rate of selective collection within this touristic city, in order to reach by 2020 a reuse and recycling rate of 70% of waste generated.

Thus, the initiative goes beyond the current commitment of the European Union to increase recycling rates, by achieving ten years earlier, in 2020, the recycling targets set by the European Commission for 2030. To reach this objective, the project contemplates three different axes of action: commerce, restoration and hotel sector, and extra-hotel industry. To reach the actors of these sectors, 73 visits to hotel and out-of-hotel establishments have already been made, and 497 visits have been paid to commercial establishments in the city, in order to identify problems and barriers related to waste recycling, and subsequently formulating a set of possible solutions which would turn the city of Puerto de la Cruz in a best practice in sustainable waste management.
After this first phase, the initiative is currently passing to its second stage, in which round tables and focus groups with relevant stakeholders are being carried out. The main actors of the tourism industry of Santa Cruz and of Tenerife are involved in order to co-create different proposals and solutions to be implemented in the municipality with the objective of improving waste management.

Among the recommendations collected so far, there are the following:
• Provide more containers to tourism industry actors
• Provide them also with information and training
• Improve the level of urban cleaning of Puerto de la Cruz
• Raising public awareness on waste management
• Increase the frequency of collection of household waste
• Adapt the waste fee
• Relieve bureaucracy and the administrative burden of waste recycling
• Reduce the economic cost of recycling