In 2024 Electrão had the privilege of seeing its activity in the management of three of the recycling systems in which it participates renewed through the publication of the new licenses: packaging, batteries and used electrical equipment.
Message from the CEO
Pedro Nazareth
- The start of a new cycle
- The measures advocated by Electrão
- Recycling at the center of European policies
The great novelty of this new generation of licenses is its longevity. For the first time in the history of waste management in Portugal, Extended Producer Responsibility has received a 10-year license, reflecting the Central Administration's confidence in the strength and relevance of this sector.
This longevity is accompanied by a high level of responsibility. Over the next decade Electrão will design the investments, prepare the tenders and choose the partners who will support it in promoting the collection, sorting, recycling and recovery of waste from these three recycling systems.
Another aspect of the licenses concerns a whole set of enhanced transparency and traceability obligations. Waste management increasingly wants to be an activity in which the beginning, middle and end of the waste are known from the source, through sorting and treatment, not forgetting incorporation into new products.
Reversing the “emergency situation” in waste management in Portugal
In the TERRA Action Plan (Efficient Transformation of Waste into Environmental Resources), presented back in 2025, a worrying scenario is outlined for the waste management sector, which is facing an “emergency situation”, according to the diagnosis.
Landfills are close to exhaustion; treatment capacity is insufficient and the PERSU 2030 targets are difficult to achieve because the sector has not kept up with the strategic forecasts, which requires urgent adjustments.
Available landfill capacity in Portugal, with the exception of a few less critical areas, is very close to its limit. This is because Portugal still currently puts around 60% of the municipal waste it produces into landfill. Electrão can play an important role in helping to divert waste from landfill by minimizing the problems posed by the announced exhaustion of landfill capacity.
Packaging, in particular, is a very important part of the total urban waste produced in Portugal, which overall amounts to around 5 million tons, approximately 500 kilos per inhabitant per year. Of these 5 million, approximately 1.5 million tons correspond to urban and non-urban packaging.
In 2024, the national packaging recycling system achieved a take-back rate of only 58% of the packaging placed on the market. There is therefore enormous potential for diverting packaging from landfill. By 2025, the country will have to guarantee the selective collection of 65% of packaging placed on the market, which is why this development will be a matter of urgency.
In 2024, the recycling of used packaging taken back by Electrão (which has a 10% market share) increased by 6% compared to the previous year. This is slightly higher than the 4% increase recorded overall by the national recycling system.
Despite a huge effort to raise awareness of the need to separate packaging and send it to the recycling bin, results remain almost stagnant and the country continues to collect just over half of the packaging it consumes.
Trying to achieve different results - more collection and more recycling - using the same approaches and the same system organizations is not the way forward. The investments to be made will have to focus on the clearly identified constraints that have prevented recycling figures from rising in Portugal.
In an attempt to optimize the three recycling systems in which it participates - packaging, batteries and electrical equipment - Electrão has been drawing attention to these issues over the years and advocates a set of very specific measures, including different collaboration models, which could make an important contribution to changing the state of the art. These measures have already been advocated in preparation for the new licenses for specific waste streams, published in 2024.
There is an urgent need to give management entities room to act at an operational level in some areas, especially by complementing the collection of packaging at low level in some places, as is already the case with electrical equipment.
It's hard to understand how Portugal, which is failing to meet collection and recycling targets in different waste families, continues to have legislation that blocks the participation of management entities in defining and making collection and recycling operational. Electrão could invest in a network that complements that of the municipalities, collaborating in the collection and sorting of packaging that is discarded by the Portuguese.
There is also a lot of work to be done in terms of the quality of service provided by municipalities in collecting waste from the public. A report recently released by the Water and Waste Services Regulatory Authority (ERSAR) showed that only 60% of ecopoints are located in places considered to be close to the citizen. This means that a very significant proportion of ecopoints are still far from the citizen, which acts as a highly discouraging factor for Portuguese families to separate and send their waste for recycling.
The management systems, both upstream and downstream, need to significantly increase their efficiency levels in order to ensure that more packaging is sent for recycling in order to meet the targets. It is necessary to foster direct, freely established relationships between management entities and municipalities/Urban Waste Management Systems to prepare investment and operation in order to meet the established targets.
For a management body like Electrão, the implementation of certain investments to enable the separation of certain families of waste, whether glass packaging or batteries, could make all the difference in meeting environmental targets and preventing the spread of pollutants that must be treated. Only in this way will it be possible to recover packaging, but also electrical equipment and batteries, which are mistakenly thrown in the common waste bin and can also be recovered and recycled, relieving landfills.
The sector will not achieve the collection, recycling and landfill detour figures it needs through the use of compensation figures, discussed in a version 2.0 study. We believe that there is room for management entities to converge on new organizational models, to finance and manage the new organizational models that will give rise to the packaging sorting plants that are needed.
The need to secure raw materials to make the digital and energy transition operational has put recycling at the heart of European policies, giving the sector a prominent role that goes far beyond environmental protection.
The European regulation on critical raw materials places recycling as a strategic priority in order to ensure essential resources for technological innovation and Europe's re-industrialization strategy.
The European Union has already identified priority products, such as lithium-ion batteries, which will improve the efficiency of resource recovery. These elements are diluted in recycled materials such as steel, iron and aluminum, which makes it difficult to reuse them in new supply chains. The residual presence of critical materials in equipment will require advanced separation and refining processes and this will be a major technological challenge that Europe will have to meet.
The success of this strategy, despite the technical difficulties, will also depend on the involvement of citizens in the separation and proper recycling of certain products.
Other challenges relate to the new European regulations on packaging and batteries, which bring stricter rules to management, covering design, production, reuse and recycling. The aim is to minimize environmental and social impacts throughout the life cycle of these devices.
The European Union's target is to ensure that recycling provides 25% of the critical raw materials needed, in order to create a more sustainable flow of essential materials. Correctly identifying, separating and recycling these products is an operational challenge, but essential for sustainability.
For the first time, circularity, waste management and recycling are taking center stage in economic policy, in the sovereignty policy of the European area and in the European economic model, as never before. It's up to us, on a Portuguese scale, to take advantage of the political momentum to unblock the sector and to deliver other collection and recycling results for the different materials needed to supply tomorrow's value chains.
2025 will bring an interesting dynamic to the sector because it will be a year of discussion about how a series of essential investments will be made.
In the year in which Electrão marks 20 years of activity - looking ahead to the next 10 years within the scope of the new licenses - the intention is to strengthen the commitment to sustainability, surpass the results already achieved and, at the same time, respond to this invitation from Europe, which gives recycling an unprecedented place of prominence.
Message from the director-general of electrics and batteries
Ricardo Furtado
The selective collection of electrical equipment reached a new high in 2024. This year, Electrão collected and sent more than 36,000 tons of used electrical equipment for recycling. This is an increase of 31% compared to 2023, when more than 27,000 tons were collected.
Selective collection of electrical equipment reaches new high in 2024
It is worth highlighting the increase in the recycling of large electrical equipment, which grew by around 43%, with 6,648 more tons of appliances sent for recovery compared to 2023. This growth is particularly important given the problem of the parallel market, which diverts large items of equipment from the formal circuit and does not reach the treatment plants where they would be properly decontaminated and recycled. This problem, which Electrão has been constantly warning about, has serious impacts on public health and the environment.
There are several factors contributing to the positive results achieved in 2024, not least the expansion of Electrão's own collection network, which currently has more than 13,500 collection points. That's 2,103 more points than in 2023.
The work of operational partners and the focus on differentiating projects that are more convenient for citizens, such as door-to-door collection of large household appliances, are also important.
Other collection campaigns, such as Quartel Electrão and Escola Electrão, which mobilize the community around the cause of reuse and recycling, also make an important contribution to results in this area.
These initiatives continue to be essential for achieving better results, but there is still a long way to go to make more people aware of the need to hand in their used equipment for recycling, combating not only the parallel market, but also the accumulation of small electrical appliances that remain useless in homes and businesses.
As well as recycling, Electrão also encourages the reuse of electrical equipment. In 2024, 1,327 tons of electrical appliances will be reused, an increase of 14% compared to 2023.
Electrão is also committed to solutions that extend the useful life of these appliances, whether through donation (with the Ondedoar.pt project) or repair (with the REPARA Academy).
Recycling of portable batteries increases by 22%
In 2024 Electrão collected and sent for recycling 412 tons of portable batteries, an increase of 22% compared to 2023, when 335 tons were sent for recycling. These devices are mainly found inside electrical equipment, such as controls, toys, cell phones and computers.
In the case of industrial batteries, which come mainly from business and industrial activities, Electrão is also reporting growth of around 7%. In the last year, the collection and recycling of these devices increased from 891 tons to 957.
Overall, Electrão sent 1,369 tons of used batteries for recycling in 2024, which represents an increase of 12% on the previous year.
The growth in collection is due to the joint efforts of municipalities, retailers, companies and institutions, waste management operators and Electrão's operational team.
The increase in the number of collection points - which can be found at www.ondereciclar.pt - has also played a key role. In 2024, collection points grew by 21%, totaling 8,735 sites across the country, an increase of 1,523 on the previous year.
All the stores that sell these products have to ensure that the equipment handed in by the citizen is taken back. This is an equally important channel with enormous potential that could help boost collection.