Granollers City Council has awarded the new contract for waste collection and street cleansing of the city to the joint venture Sanejament Granollers, led by FCC Medio Ambiente. The contract’s order book value amounts to €47 million for the next 10 years.

It should be noted that the fleet will be completely renewed for the new service, with around 70% electric vehicles, and the central machinery depot will boast the charging infrastructure for this new Zero Emissions machinery, which shows the commitment of Granollers City Council to the sustainability of services and the care for the environment.

In order to attend to the almost 63,000 inhabitants of the city, the workforce amounts to 75 people and, among the milestones of the new contract, the cleansing service is reinforced at weekends and holidays and a new configuration of the collection service with mobile container platforms is proposed, which aims to increase the current percentage of selective collection, through the implementation of intelligent containers with user identification and electronic locking. 

Regarding the waste collection of the city, with more than 21,000 tonnes of residual, organic and bulky waste per year, the service has 17 vehicles, all of them newly acquired, and new services such as the collection of domestic oil or bulky waste are being introduced, in order to improve the current image of container locations.

The mobile container platforms collection is carried out for the five fractions from Monday to Saturday. It is planned to extend the commercial waste collection service in the future for the paper and cardboard fraction, and subsequently for the packaging fraction. The homogenisation of all containerisation will be promoted in order to collect the five fractions in all locations, and a reinforcement service on Sundays for the side-loading collection of the residual fraction will be implemented. A new location of mobile platform of extra containers is also included in order to reduce overflows in certain areas of the city with rear-loading collection systems.

The street cleansing service, which covers 120 kilometres of streets, boasts 31 newly acquired vehicles, 77% of which are Zero Emissions. Electric self-supporting trolley and tricycles have been purchased to facilitate staff commute in areas far from the starting point and/or with steep slopes. An electric self-propelled vacuum cleaner will also be incorporated in the city centre. There will be an increase in the number of staff at weekends and on public holidays. On Saturdays, the service will cover practically the whole municipality, and on Sundays and public holidays there will be mixed sweeping teams and cleansing patrols throughout the day to ensure total hourly coverage. In addition, a comprehensive digital management platform will be implemented to monitor and control the services, with all vehicles geolocated.

One of the new features of the contract is the set up of a new urban furniture and graffiti cleaning service that includes periodic cleaning and maintenance of vertical elements (panels, lampposts, billboards, etc.) on the public highways, as well as other unique elements in the city, such as the tower in Maluquer and Salvador square, the mechanical ramps in Carles Riba street and the glass in Plaça de les Olles square. The graffiti and stained surface removal service will be carried out using environmentally friendly cleaning products, applying anti-graffiti systems in those areas where, due to their features and recurrence, it is considered necessary.

With the presentation of the new services, the campaign 'Objectiu Sostenibilitat! Fem el clic!’ (Objective sustainability! Let’s make the change!) aims to highlight the benefits of these improvements in the municipality and, at the same time, to convey the need for a change of mentality as a society in order to move towards a better, greener and more sustainable city. Actions will be carried out to promote citizenship awareness and responsible conduct to encourage a change in habits and help achieve the goals set for 2030. Among them, a Citizenship Service Office will be set up, with free face-to-face, telephone and telematic assistance for requests and queries related to the cleansing and waste collection service provided; a service that will be provided to both domestic and commercial users.