Analysis of Civic Amenity Sites Management System
                                        in the City of Brno


The main subject of our project is an analysis of waste management system in the city of Brno. We
have tried to offer general view of the system and its functioning and suggest possible
improvements. The basic idea of the whole project was to find possible ways of future development
by using a comparison of the civic amenity sites’ systems.

The work is divided into three key parts. The first one is an analysis of current situation in
Brno. It shows problems of civic amenity sites (CA sites) in Brno and outlines the situation in
other cities in the Czech Republic and abroad. The second part consists of suggestions of
improvements and the third part offers new solutions that might be implemented into the system.

We worked out several analyses in order to obtain better insight in the waste management system in
Brno. We visited every CA site to find out their frequency of use, facilities, security and
accessibility by car or public transport system etc. The whole system was then analyzed using SWOT
analysis and the parameter of reaching distance to the incinerator. We also examined waste
management system in other cities to get a better overview.

Comparison with the abroad cities

We used two categories of cities for our comparison – cities in Slovakia with over 50 000
inhabitants and cities in European Union comparable to Brno (300 000 – 500 000 inhabitants). The
data was collected by questionnaires and searching the official websites of cities.

We analyzed the amount of civic amenity sites in those cities and searched for projects of
secondary use of disposed items. Also the comparison of the accessibility of data searched for on
the official websites was carried out.

The results and suggestions are as follows:

Brno has more civic amenity sites than any other city in the survey. The ratio is about 10 400
inhabitants/CA site, while in Slovak cities it is on average about 50 000 inhabitants/CA site,
meaning there is about 5 times more CA sites in Brno than in an average Slovakian city. The cities
in European Union comparable to Brno also showed interesting results. Some of them have only 1 CA
site, maximum was 18, while in Brno there are 39. The average ratio was about 150 000
inhabitants/CA site. These results support our thought that in Brno there are more CA sites than is
needed.

The projects for the reuse of items were not found in any Slovak city (except regular charities).
In other cities we found some very interesting examples of dealing with this topic. Online auctions
of unwanted items, often offered for free, are a very common thing. Their main problem is that not
many people know about them. In the cities of Mannheim, Bonn and Kingston upon Hull they support
these projects by placing the information at official city website. Other type of item reuse
project is collection of all unwanted items at one place and later choosing by those who need those
items. Excellent examples of such projects can be found in Bologna and Haag. We suggest that the
city of Brno should start or support a project like this, in order to reduce the amount of waste
disposed of in the civic amenity sites.

Last but not least, we analyzed the accessibility of information. In all the cities in the Great
Britain there was a link for such information at the home page of official website, which we found
really practical. We suggest that the city of Brno would do the same and place a link for
information about reduction, reuse and recycling of waste and about CA sites at the home page of
its official website.

Conclusions

Our analysis is primarily focused on operational and technical aspects of the civic amenity sites
system in Brno. Of course, we also took into account other dimensions - social, environmental,
ethical etc. We prepared several proposals for changes of the system as an outcome of our analysis.
Also we mentioned problems that could be caused by implementation of these changes. Basics for our
proposals are clearly reported in SWOT analysis.

As the staff service told us visits by citizen depend mainly on weather and on day time. During the
year they are coming in the start of spring, in summer holidays and around Christmas and Easter.
During the week they are dependent on work time and they can arrive only after working hours.
Usually they come almost after closing hour. The authorities should satisfy residents and they
should adapt and integrate opening time.

Many CA sites face various problems e.g. insufficient fence allowing vandalism and thefts, which
cause higher running costs. Thieves visit CA sites in night and they took some metal components of
electronic waste. Financial losses arise by these robberies and it is counted in thousands of Czech
crowns. It could be prevented by better fencing, by installable cameras or by motional sensors.

Another problem is low satisfaction of people with service due to restrictions of disposable waste
and fee for disposing of dangerous waste and other ‘high cost’ kinds of waste. This could be for
some people so unacceptable that they sometimes leave their waste right at the gate. The proposed
video-monitoring of the CA sites and their neighborhood will allow preventing these cases.


We collected a large amount of data about CA sites which had to be analyzed. The most important
detection was the very high number of CA sites in Brno in comparison with other Czech and European
cities. From the range of cities that were compared the largest number of CA sites we found in
Ostrava (16). Moreover there is a next reduction planned. It is obvious that Brno with its 39 CA
sites stands out of the general trend.

This information influenced our further research and we decided to make a list of CA sites suitable
for a cancellation. We put on that list CA sites which we found ineffective or unsuitable because
of their wrong placement or bad access for transport service or their size. From geographical point
of view the situation of duplicity is very often – some of CA sites are placed in two different
districts but actually they are too close to each other and serve for the same area. It is clearly
possible to see this problem on maps which we created for our project.

Reduction of the amount of CA sites will mean more money for each CA site. It should lead to
extending and improving of offered services and protection of CA sites.

Economies of scale are not negligible because the operation of large amount of small a middle size
CA sites is always more expensive than the operation of smaller amount of bigger CA sites. We could
save a large amount of money just by increasing efficiency of human resources because many of
employees will be found redundant in the case of CA sites cancelling.

We are aware that citizens can be mistaken and the reduction of CA sites can be understood by them
as a limitation of public services, although this is not true as we tried to show in our study.
That is why the way how people will be informed about the restructuring is essential.

Due to our own work with information and also due to the comparison with foreign cities we found
out that there is a big space for improvements in Brno information system. We recommend putting
internet link on a Brno city homepage that will help people to get on some basic information
directory about waste management in Brno. Furthermore we think that it is necessary to improve the
way how people can search for information about CA sites in GIS system and make it all more
user-friendly (e.g. addition of GPS). This may help to improve public awareness about their
allocation and, if those information are added to the map, knowledge about types of waste
disposable at specific sites.


Next important part of our study is a proposal of project „Give him a chance“. The aim of this
project is to separate usable furniture or other things usable in household. We suggest creating a
charity shop where these usable items could be sold. This idea has an ecological level (prevention
of waste), social level (help for low-income groups) and community (money from the project can be
used for charity).

In summary we can say that the result of our suggestions should be saving of public money,
reduction of waste and better awareness of people leading to a more rational waste management.

Current situation:

:





After planned reduction: