FCC Medio Ambiente has once again been awarded the contract to operate the domestic waste transfer and treatment service for the province of Salamanca for the Consortium for the Management of Municipal Solid Waste in Salamanca (GIRSA), to whom it has been providing these services since 2008. The contract, which represents an order book value of €24 million over the next four years, covers the 358 municipalities in the province, with a population of around 330,000.

The services include the operation and maintenance of the Waste Treatment Centre (WTC) in Gomecello, where FCC Medio Ambiente has carried out various construction and improvement works over the years, and the management of six transfer stations. The plant currently treats 127,000 tonnes per year of municipal solid waste from the province, excluding packaging, and has a maximum annual processing capacity of 170,000 tonnes of residual waste, to which 15,000 tonnes of organic waste from selective collection (FORS, from its acronym in Spanish) have recently been added.

The contract employs 99 people and involves an investment of over €3 million which, among other improvements, will be used to build a new by-products warehouse; purchase an electric ancillary transfer vehicle and an electric vehicle charging station; install an ultraviolet air purification system in the FORS facility; and renovate the fire protection system. In addition, the contract introduces other new features such as a 200 kW photovoltaic installation, a new pre-treatment extraction system and a new reject weighing machine, as well as preparing the facilities and staff for future automation.

The WTC offers different waste recovery solutions: recycling, compost and biostabilised production, biogas production in landfills and biomethanisation, landfill management and leachate treatment management using reverse osmosis. Through these processes, the plant's performance is particularly important, as it manages to produce more than 2GWh of electrical energy for self-consumption or sale of surplus.  

Also in line with the environmental awareness promoted by FCC Medio Ambiente, a strategy of training and awareness activities has been established at different levels, aimed at rural and urban citizens, the educational and university community and the business sector. In addition, structural incentive and reinforcement actions will be implemented in the form of presentations, campaigns, concerts, cultural programmes and competitions, among others.