I have been preparing a RFC for several days, but now weekend is over and i won’t have time to finish things up. Here’s drafted tldr of a draft of a RFC in case this ends up as another forgotten project. Scope of this proposal is limited to Estonia. For international uses, I suggest to read EU report on waste sorting standardisation.

Problem: When surveying packaging recycling containers (PRC) it’s repetitive to list all kinds of waste collected there. There’s also risk of errors introduced by human input. My initial estimate is that trio of standard PRCs should get about 20-30 recycling:* tags.

Observation: PRC colours are standardised across Estonia – Paper blue, glass green and metal/plastic/beverage yellow (source). While Estonia has adapted Danish color schema as nationwide standard for garbage collection, PRCs have bit different colours. Standard-PRCs are often accompanied by reusable clothes container (no standard colouring).

Objective: Simplify & standardise mapping of different waste collected.

• Mapper has to simply pick colour(s) of the container(s) they see and..
• …preset ensures consistency of different waste types listed.
• Therefore PRC can be mapped at higher quality from further distance (assuming mapper doesn’t know PRC colour codes by hearth.

Solution: Introduce localised custom (iD & JOSM) editor tagging preset (e.g “Pakendikonteiner EE”)

Downsides:

• Difficult to scale legal rules up to international level, in some countries even to county level. Some cities may use own colours.
• Unclear if this idea is technically fully achievable (editor limitations, namely adding multiple colours to single node)
• Technical scale-up difficulties – possible performance loss is each major city or county in developed world gets own preset.

Initial idea originally published on 2025-09-12. Full 40 pages of notes are not processed yet.

PS 2025-09-16: Today I encountered set of 5 containers. Signage colours and icons mostly match those in standard. This containers include generic waste (black/grey) and biodegradable (brown).