News

AGQ LABS has recently been awarded in hiring public by the company Empresa Provincial de Residuos y Medio Ambiente, S.A. (EPREMASA), under the Diputación de Córdoba (Spain), for the "Study of characterization of municipal waste from the Montalbán environmental complex".

The scope of the characterization service includes all of the municipalities in the province of Cordoba, excluded the capital, with a population of 474.109 inhabitants, distributed in 74 municipalities. EPREMASA carries out the municipal waste collection service in all of them except the municipalities of Palma del Río, Cabra, Puente Genil and Montilla where EPREMASA manages only the treatment.

This study will perform the characterization of the rest of municipalities and groups of municipalities during the 2013 period of analysis. A campaign for waste characterization will be carried out the in spring, between the months of May-June in order to obtain a representative sample of the production in spring time.

The methodology used responds to the need to define the number of samples required to estimate the characterization of waste generated at source, so obtained characterization does not exceed a certain error margin acceptable from the statistical point of view, with a certain probability known as trust level. For the sampling design, it has been used a statistical method in the determination of the number of definitive samples to take and their distribution by socioeconomic levels.

The characterization is based on a stratified, random type sampling to which we divide the total provincial population N, in subpopulations called strata that correspond to municipalities or groups of municipalities, whose organization in collection routes allow grouping it differentially. According to this criterion and considering an error margin of 7% and confidence level of 95%, the number of samples to analyze by group of municipalities or strata will be 108 trucks.