The City Council of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona) has awarded FCC Medio Ambiente the new contract for waste collection, street cleansing, management of recycling centres and maintenance of the sewerage system in the city. The contract represents an order book value of almost €400 million over the next ten years and will employ around 500 people.

With a surface area of 12.5 square kilometres and a population of more than 260,000, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat is characterised by its high population density, one of the highest in Europe, unevenly distributed among its districts. With the particularities of the city in mind, where FCC Medio Ambiente has been present since 1960, the design of the new services is based on the location of different facilities and personnel throughout the city distributed in a central depot, six ancillary centres and a fixed waste recycling centre, in order to promote the so-called ‘collaborative incidents’ that allow tasks to be transferred between work teams so that they can be resolved in the shortest time and with the highest degree of efficiency possible.

This award reinforces FCC Medio Ambiente's commitment to Spanish municipalities, especially in Catalonia, where it has an extensive presence in urban areas, where, in a partnership with its clients, it faces the great challenge of increasing selective collection to meet European targets. The company is leading the development and implementation of new user identification technologies and high-efficiency collection systems, which are key to achieving these objectives.

The City Council and the company have devised services based on sustainability and technological innovation, always with a focus on the citizen and their comfort. On the one hand, 100% of the vehicle and machinery fleet will be renewed with units with ECO or Zero Emissions environmental labels, powered by Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), electric and hybrid. The facilities will also be designed according to sustainability guidelines, with the installation of solar panels and the use of groundwater for cleaning vehicles and equipment. With the aim of reducing waste generation from the service itself, the possibility of reusing workers' clothing is being considered. On the other hand, the integral management of the services will be centralised from the VISION technological platform, developed exclusively by FCC Medio Ambiente, which makes possible real-time interaction with service incidents and requests from residents and the municipal team.

For the collection of waste, which manages 88,500 tonnes a year of residual, organic, packaging, paper and glass fractions, there is a fleet of 52 vehicles, 22 of them side-loading collectors. The service, divided into three work shifts, aims to increase the rate of selective collection to meet the European Union's demanding recycling and landfill diversion targets, although the collection of residual waste is also being strengthened. For selective collection, the plan is to distribute container locations for the five fractions. The paper containers will be metal, specially adapted for L'Hospitalet, and the organic containers will be open for use by citizens but will have a lid and identification system for large generators, such as restaurants, businesses or shops. The permanent collection of bulky items will also be maintained.

The street cleansing service, which covers over 230 kilometres of streets, will have staff working 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and 78 vehicles, including seven quieter and more environmentally friendly electric sweepers. Likewise, it is planned to provide high-intensity water equipment to the whole city to work on deep-seated pavement stains and the importance of manual sweeping will be maintained, with 104 itineraries.

The sewerage maintenance service, which will boast six vehicles, will take care of the 232.94 kilometres of the network, including the 31.7 kilometres that can be visited, and will also take care of 11,200 drains and 9,270 metres of interceptor drains. Of particular note is the new preventive inspection service equipped with high-precision and reliable equipment to anticipate and avoid incidents.

Social sustainability is another of the fundamental pillars of this renewal and in this period the plan is to increase the percentage of women on the workforce from 30% to 50%. In order to involve citizens in the care of their municipality, awareness campaigns will be carried out on the need for waste separation and the improvement of the rate of separation at source.