The recipients of the project are the citizens of Hernani. Currently there are around 700 family units that self-compost at home and around 1,100 that participate in community composting.

The people who participate are particularly beneficiaries of the project, since, due to the regulation of community composting made by decree of the government of the Basque Country, they are the only ones who can use the compost.

The entities involved in the project are, on the one hand, the City Council of Hernani through the Waste Office, which belongs to the Environment Unit, and, on the other, the citizens of Hernani as participating in the composting process.

The governance of the project is carried out from Hernani's City Council through the Waste Office, which belongs to the Environment Unit. The City Council, through the municipal company Garbitania Zero Zabor, has a hired person who controls the composting process with periodic actions such as temperature control, traceability and possible incidents.

On the other hand, the external company that manages the municipal garden is in charge of transporting the compost from the composters to a municipal space where it has just matured, and subsequently to another space where, once ready, is collected by the people participating in the project.

The City Council takes advantage of the remains of pruning, leaf litter and other plant remains as structuring material and deposits them in a compartment of the composters for the people participating in the project to make use of them.

To encourage family units to self-compost their organic fraction of waste, City Council provided composters for free to all those who signed up for the program, in addition to offering them a composting course.

One of the main actions developed, the "door to door" waste collection system, has allowed Hernani to go from a household waste separation rate of 32 to 78%.

Hernani's City Council established differentiated municipal waste rates, with a 40% discount for people who participate in community composting.

In the beginning, the community composting system did not work properly. There were responsible people who cared about every part of the process, while others just dumped organic matter into the composter. So soon there were problems with flies, smells, etc.

Due to the high cost involved in outsourcing waste management and with the desire to close cycles internally, the possibility of creating a municipal composting plant was considered. The City Council, however, encountered the refusal of the Provincial Council of Guipúscoa when obtaining the necessary permits, with the argument that the municipality of Hernani could not have the competence to decide on the implementation of this infrastructure.

The Basque Government regulated community composting through a decree in 2019, which poses a threat to the project, in the sense that it requires strict conditions to be able to carry out the activity which are difficult to fulfill despite there must be a professional control of the composting. Specifically, it only allows people who participate in the composting process to collect compost, and they can only use it in gardening. This decree has been appealed to the courts, but at the moment there has been no resolution in this regard. This drawback means that the project is at a point where, despite the fact that there are more people interested in participating, it has been decided not to increase its size.

Since at the beginning it was possible to verify that the self-management of composting by citizens was not entirely effective, it was observed the need to hire a person to control the whole process: compost turning, temperature control, the pH and humidity etc.

The initial composting tanks were replaced by more voluminous ones, as it was necessary to be able to expand the project. These tanks are wooden houses that have been integrated into the landscape and have more capacity. In addition, they have several compartments to pour the organic fraction into, to start the composting process and to deposit the structuring material.

It has been verified that using the bonus concept to refer to the reduction in the waste rates of people participating in the community composting process is not the most appropriate, since it is considered that it may have caused some people to have participated in the project for financial gain and then did not get involved enough in the composting process. It is considered more appropriate, then, to talk about differentiated rates , since the fact of composting involves work for the person who participates in the process and a saving of work for the municipality.

To facilitate the waste separation task, any organic waste can be dumped in the composter, even if it is slow decomposing. It has also been verified that the bags, even if they are biodegradable, have a negative influence on the purity of the compost, which is why they are not allowed to be composted. Thanks to these practices, a purity of 99.76% of the compound has now been achieved.

• Manual of composting
• Guide to the correct classification of waste