Waste categories at the municipal recycling centre in Galicia: guide for operatives and technicians

Summary: Galician regional regulations establish specific waste categories that every municipal recycling centre must record separately. Knowing them precisely reduces classification errors, facilitates reporting in GaIA and prevents inspection incidents. This guide reviews each fraction and the most common queries in your actual operations.

Table of contents

• Why consistency between what you receive and what you report matters
• The mandatory fractions according to Galician regulations
• Hazardous waste: the categories that generate the most errors
• Common ambiguous classification scenarios
• How these categories affect GaIA reporting
• What your council can do to reduce recording errors

Why consistency between what you receive and what you report matters

When a recycling centre operative accepts a waste item and assigns it to a fraction, that data travels to the GaIA report that the council must submit to the Xunta. If the classification on receipt does not match the categories required by regional regulations, the report carries errors that are afterwards difficult to correct without reviewing the original records.

The problem is usually not lack of knowledge: most technicians can distinguish a RAEE from bulky waste. The problem is dispersion: different instructions depending on the operative, loose papers, unvalidated spreadsheets. A waste item with ambiguous classification is recorded differently each time it arrives, and that accumulates inconsistencies in your operational database.

The mandatory fractions according to Galician regulations

The reference regulations for municipal recycling centres in Galicia combine the national framework (Ley 7/2022 de Residuos y Suelos Contaminados) with the specific instructions of the Plan de Xestión de Residuos Urbanos de Galicia (PXRUG). The categories that every recycling centre must record separately are:

Non-hazardous domestic fractions:

• Paper and cardboard
• Glass (containers and flat glass, if the recycling centre receives them separately)
• Light packaging (plastic, metal, carton)
• Textiles and footwear
• Wood (includes wooden furniture without special treatment)
• Bulky waste not classifiable in other fractions (sofas, mattresses, metal frames)
• Construction and demolition waste of domestic origin (RCD), with quantity limit per deposit
• Ferrous and non-ferrous metals
• Used vegetable oil
• End-of-life tyres (NFU)

Hazardous fractions:

• Batteries and accumulators
• Batteries
• Expired medicines (although most councils refer them to SIGRE)
• Mineral oil (vehicle lubricant)
• Paints, varnishes, solvents and adhesives
• Fluorescent tubes and discharge lamps
• Aerosols
• Plant protection products and biocides
• RAEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment), broken down into the categories of the corresponding SIG system

Other fractions with specific treatment:

• Waste from refrigeration and air conditioning equipment (RAEE with fluorinated gases, requiring an authorised handler)
• Toner and printer cartridges
• Radiographs (due to their silver content)

Each of these categories must appear as a separate fraction in your records, because GaIA treats them individually in reporting.

Hazardous waste: the categories that generate the most errors

RAEE accounts for the largest volume of classification errors in Galician recycling centres. Electrical and electronic equipment is divided into categories with different authorised managers, and mixing them in a single “electronics” container generates problems in reporting and delivery to the manager.

The RAEE categories that cause most confusion:

• Large household appliances (washing machines, refrigerators, dishwashers): are collected together, but appliances with fluorinated gases (refrigerators, freezers, air conditioning units) must be separated because their manager is different.
• Small household appliances (blenders, toasters, hair dryers): go into a different fraction from large appliances, although they may seem physically similar.
• Screens and monitors: their own category, do not go with the rest of IT.
• IT equipment (computers, keyboards, printers): fraction separate from screens and consumer electronics.
• Discharge lamps: although they are RAEE, they have their own collection system and must not be mixed with other electrical appliances.

Oils also generate frequent confusion: cooking vegetable oil and mineral lubricating oil are two completely different fractions, with different managers. Mixed in the same container they render both streams useless for their valorisation.

Common ambiguous classification scenarios

These are the situations that operatives enquire about most frequently and where the lack of unified criteria generates the most inconsistencies:

Furniture with mixed parts A wardrobe with wooden structure and metal fittings: goes to bulky waste or wood if the structure is predominantly wood. The fittings are not separated on receipt unless the council has specific manager instructions.

Bed bases and mattresses They are bulky waste, but some managers collect them separately. If your council has a specific contract for mattresses, they should have their own fraction in the record, not go to generic “bulky waste”.

Fire extinguishers They are hazardous waste (contain pressurised agents and chemical components), but many operatives classify them as metals. They require an authorised manager.

Cables and plugs without equipment Although they lack an equipment casing, they are RAEE. They go into the small equipment or cables fraction, according to the SIG reference of the council.

Clothing with extreme dirt or deterioration Textile that is heavily deteriorated or contaminated is not valuable as second-hand clothing, but it is as industrial rags. The fraction in the record should still be textiles; it is the manager who determines the final destination.

Construction waste with asbestos Although the resident declares that “there is no asbestos”, any RCD with reasonable suspicion of fibrocemment must be rejected or treated as hazardous waste. The recycling centre is not the place for asbestos management unless it has specific authorisation.

Medicines without packaging They still go into the expired medicines fraction or the SIGRE system, even without a box. The criterion is the content, not the packaging.

How these categories affect GaIA reporting

The GaIA report, which Galician councils must submit periodically to the Xunta, breaks down managed waste by fraction and by destination. If your records group together what GaIA expects to see in two or three separate fractions, the report cannot be generated directly: someone has to break down the data manually before reporting.

That manual breakdown work is what consumes the most time in small technical teams, and it is also where secondary errors are introduced. A record of origin well structured by normative categories eliminates that intermediate step.

Councils that record by normative fractions from day one reduce the time for generating the GaIA report by between 60% and 80% compared to those working with their own categories and having to adapt afterwards.

If you want to understand better how the GaIA report works and what exact data it requires, you can see the complete guide at How the GaIA waste report works in Galicia.

What your council can do to reduce recording errors

The first step is to have a list of active fractions at your recycling centre that matches exactly the categories that GaIA expects to receive. That list must be available to operatives at the moment of receipt, not filed away in a technical document that no one consults.

The second step is to prevent recording in categories that do not exist in your system. When an operative can freely type the name of the fraction, variability is inevitable: “electronics”, “electrical”, “small RAEE” and “small equipment” could be the same waste item recorded in four different ways by four different people.

The third step is to link each fraction with its authorised manager and its LER code, so that the receipt record automatically generates the data that the report needs.

If your team is still working with spreadsheets or paper records, you can see the specific problems this generates at Manual waste recording at recycling centres: operational errors that cost more than they seem.

At TuPuntoLimpio, the platform is configured with the exact categories of your recycling centre, aligned with the fractions that GaIA requires, before the first day of use. Implementation takes between 2 and 4 weeks, with training included for your operational team. If you would like to see how it fits into your actual operations, you can request it at tupuntolimpio.es.