Sagunto enters final stretch of Ecovidrio's Green Flag campaign
Sagunto is competing with 27 other Valencian towns for Ecovidrio's Green Flag, which rewards hospitality businesses for recycling glass packaging over summer.
The Green Flag for Sustainability campaign, run by Ecovidrio (Spain's glass-recycling organisation), has passed its halfway point and is entering its final, decisive weeks. Sagunto is taking part for the seventh year in a row, alongside 27 other towns in the Valencian Community, hoping to win this award, which recognises local bars and restaurants for recycling glass packaging and supporting the circular economy.
Summer is when restaurants generate the most glass waste. Bars, beach kiosks and restaurants near the coast — including Almardà beach and the Puerto de Sagunto seafront — use far more bottles and glass containers during these months. That makes the coming weeks crucial for improving collection figures before the contest period ends.
To measure the town's starting point, consultancy firm Ecosilvo surveyed 157 HORECA businesses (hotels, restaurants and cafés) in Sagunto about how they sort their waste. The results: 117 correctly separate glass, 120 separate light packaging, 110 separate paper and cardboard, 119 separate organic waste, and 117 separate used cooking oil. These numbers set the baseline for tracking improvement over the coming weeks.
As an incentive for residents, two small glass-recycling "igloo" bins were raffled off last week among visitors to an information stand run by environmental educators from Mirada Circular (Imedes) at Almardà beach, part of the awareness activities linked to the campaign.
Ecovidrio is Spain's non-profit organisation that has managed the country's extended producer responsibility system for glass packaging since 1995, and it is the group behind this campaign. The Green Flags Movement it runs has grown quickly: in its 2022 edition, it mobilised more than 13,300 hospitality businesses across Andalusia, Catalonia, the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands and the Región de Murcia.
The scale of the project also shows in the latest completed results: in 2025, the 116 participating coastal towns collected 66,800 tonnes of glass packaging. Recycling that glass avoided 38,700 tonnes of CO2 emissions, saved the extraction of 80,000 tonnes of raw materials, and saved energy equivalent to 47,700 MWh, according to the organisation.
For Sagunto, winning the award would be public recognition of its hospitality sector's efforts — especially visible during peak tourist season, when pressure on the town's beaches is highest. According to aytosagunto.es, with additional data from Wikipedia on Ecovidrio.