The challenge
Barcelona’s Zero Waste Plan 2021-2027 is the city’s roadmap for moving towards a waste prevention and management model based on the circular economy. It follows on from the 2012-2020 Prevention Plan and brings Barcelona’s Zero Waste Strategy into a cross-cutting approach that involves different municipal areas and departments.
In a plan of this scale, monitoring doesn’t just mean checking whether actions have been carried out. You need to know what’s been done, what result it produced, how far it’s progressed towards its objectives, and what needs to change to keep moving forward.
The challenge, then, was building a monitoring system able to bring together information from different municipal teams, calculate useful, comparable indicators, analyse the Plan’s overall progress, and turn all of that information into knowledge for decision-making.
The challenge was designing a monitoring methodology that would give us information genuinely useful for decision-making.
Project development
The service was structured as a continuous process of collecting, validating, calculating, analysing and reporting back on information, with the aim of producing an annual analysis of the Plan’s status and progress.
- Collecting and cross-checking information. Coordination with the people responsible for actions across different municipal areas, with individual follow-up to ensure the information was complete and comparable.
- Calculating and updating indicators. Calculating the specific indicators for each action, as well as the Plan’s overall indicators: actions carried out, waste avoided or source-separated, emissions avoided, audience reached, participating stakeholders, and resources mobilised.
- Analysing results and progress against objectives. Reading quantitative and qualitative results together to assess how each action, and each of the Plan’s five thematic areas, was progressing.
- Evaluation and continuous improvement. Identifying issues, deviations and opportunities for improvement, and putting forward proposals to adapt actions and strengthen progress towards the objectives.
- Reporting back and governance. Producing the annual reports and coordinating the Zero Waste Observatory, a space for dialogue with experts and sector stakeholders to share results, bring in outside judgement, and identify where to focus effort.
Results
The system built makes it possible to monitor the Plan at different levels, from the specific status of each action through to its overall progress.
The information was structured into five thematic areas, 12 strategic lines, 23 actions and 82 sub-actions, keeping traceability between actions carried out, indicators calculated, and the Plan’s objectives.
Annual monitoring makes it possible to identify both the level of execution and the results generated.
The analysis also includes outcome indicators that track the Plan’s progress in terms of:
- Waste avoided and waste collected through source separation.
- CO₂-equivalent emissions avoided.
- Participation and audience reached.
- Stakeholders involved.
- Progress in prevention, reuse and preparation for reuse.
- Progress in source separation.
- Results of regulatory and fiscal actions.
- Participation, governance and research.
The system makes it possible to link action results to the Plan’s quantitative and qualitative objectives, and to spot areas where actions need reinforcing, modifying or redirecting.
Conclusions
The main value of the project lies in having turned a complex, cross-cutting plan into an operational, comparable and decision-oriented monitoring system.
The methodology overcomes one of the main risks of strategic plans: monitoring becoming a mere annual compilation of activities. In this case, each action is reviewed in terms of implementation, indicators and results, and the information is checked against the Plan’s overall objectives.
The model also makes it possible to reflect the reality of a public policy that evolves over time. Actions may progress, be delayed, be modified or even be newly added.
The combination of data, technical monitoring and expert review ensures that the results are not confined to an annual report, but instead help identify priorities and guide action in the years that follow.
Monitoring becomes a tool for evolving the Plan.
Lessons learned
- An indicator is only useful if it helps you decide. You need to go beyond just calculating figures. The analysis has to help you understand what’s happening, spot deviations, and identify where to step in.
- A cross-cutting plan needs a cross-cutting system. When actions depend on different municipal areas, monitoring has to bring together every source of information and keep a shared methodology. The Zero Waste Plan includes actions led by different areas and departments across the Council.
- Data needs context. Quantitative results are complemented with qualitative indicators and an assessment of each action. That makes it possible to understand not just how much has been done, but how it was done and how far it’s progressed.
- Monitoring also has to look ahead. Its job doesn’t end with evaluation. The methodology includes identifying improvements and opportunities to adapt actions while the Plan is in force — precisely one of the objectives set out in the technical assistance service.
- Knowledge is also built through comparison. The Zero Waste Observatory brings in experts and representatives from zero-waste-related organisations to add knowledge, opinion and outside perspective to the Plan’s monitoring.
Measuring tells us where we are. Analysing helps us understand why we’re there. And repeating this monitoring every year helps decide what to do next.