“State-of-the-art technology means that in Ljubljana an impressive 70 percent of all waste is recycled,” they reported.

In the report, titled “Ljubljana and its war on waste”, we first see a shot of a Ljubljana landfill from 20 years ago with piles of rubbish. Then you see the same site today. Instead of rubbish now all you see is a grassy meadow. As the BBC reported, the amount of rubbish sent to landfill in Slovenia has dropped significantly in the last few years.

The majority of this is due to Ljubljana, which recycles a full 70 percent of its waste. The reporter explains that the people of Ljubljana separate their waste, and shows a shot of underground waste bins.

The good results achieved in Ljubljana are attributed to the high tech waste processing technologies used by the Ljubljana Regional Waste Management Centre (RCERO Ljubljana). The reporter visited the centre, where he was told that organic waste is turned into compost, while residual waste is converted into fuel.

Therefore less than five percent of waste, which cannot be reused as a raw material or energy source, ends up in the landfill, but even this waste does not have harmful effects on the environment.

Every year, the centre generates approximately 60 thousand tons of solid fuel of different calorific values, and seven thousand tons of compost. It also generates 17 thousand megawatt hours of electricity and 36 thousand megawatt hours of heat.

With its 70-percent recycling rate, Ljubljana has been the leading EU capital city in this area for many years, and is the number one European capital on the path to a Zero Waste society.

By adopting a Zero Waste strategy, Ljubljana, which was named European Green Capital 2016, has made a commitment to separate collection of at least three quarters of its waste, processing less than 60 kilogrammes of residual waste per inhabitant per year, and disposing of less than 30 kilogrammes of waste per inhabitant per year by 2025.