Valencia City Council has once again trusted FCC Medio Ambiente with the street cleansing and urban waste collection and transport contract for lot 2, which covers the northern area of the city, for €525.89 million over a 15-year period. The company has been providing services in the capital of the Turia river since 1957, and since 1994 it has been responsible of the northern sector, which covers the districts of Campanar, La Zaidia, Pla del Real, Camins del Grau, Algirós, Benimaclet, Rascanya, Benicalap, Poblats del Nord and de l'Oest, as well as the bridges along the old riverbed.

The progress in the new phase entrusted to FCC Medio Ambiente is both qualitative and quantitative: the contract has a larger workforce, more than 550 people, and the nearly 200 vehicles and machines in the fleet will have the ZERO (electric) and ECO (hybrid and compressed natural gas CNG) environmental labels, thus reducing the emission of noise and polluting gases, in a major commitment to sustainability and as a sign of Valencia City Council's pledge to the fight against climate change and the reduction of the carbon footprint.

With regard to the collection service, in order to attend to more than 365,000 inhabitants and collect around 140,000 tonnes per year, a number of new features have been incorporated. Thus, the more than 2,000 container islands will have one bin for each fraction and the new bicompartmental electric vehicles for maintenance collections will allow the simultaneous selective collection to be reinforced with the minimum environmental impact. The collection lorries will be equipped with an on-board system with cameras to report and validate the waste overflow in the bins and to assess the degree of individual daily filling in each container. For the selective collection of organic fraction, the installation of 1,600 sensors and locking systems and user identification equipment in the containers is planned, as well as filling buoy sensors for sampling on the residual waste routes. The methodology for estimating the filling level of containers for the residual waste developed by FCC Medio Ambiente together with the Statistics and Operations Research Chair at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, which has made it possible to optimise the locations and units by up to 18%, stands out. The strategic planning envisaged in the new contract is expected to meet the waste separation and recycling targets set for 2030, which, together with the entire Zero and Eco fleet, aims to comply with the European Sustainability Agenda. Regarding the management of recycling centres, two mobile ones have been incorporated and a programmed service has been established at 24 sites with a four-week cycle.

For the street cleansing service, which covers a surface area of 2.3 million square metres, sweeping frequencies will be increased and cleaning tools designed by FCC Medio Ambiente will be introduced, such as the polypropylene fibre broom and the electrically-assisted trolley with weighing device.

FCC Medio Ambiente will manage the service through the digital platform VISION, developed exclusively by the company, introducing new applications for the control and optimisation of work that make it possible to interact in real time with service incidents and requests from residents, all controlled from the new Monitoring Centre.

PARKS AND GROUND MAINTENANCE

In September 2022, FCC Medio Ambiente renewed the contract for parks and ground maintenance in the northern area of Valencia, with a budget of €32.29 million for a four-year period. In this new stage, an improvement plan for the landscaped areas and trees is being implemented based on the "PDCA" logic (Plan, Develop, Control and Act), which makes it possible not only to carry out a diagnosis, but establishing strong points and areas for improvement and also to associate concrete and specific actions to promote continuous improvement and to plan future lines of action. FCC Medio Ambiente runs the operations based on a tailor-made maintenance plan under criteria of sustainability, biodiversity and functionality, including efficient management of irrigation and fountains, reduction of emissions through the use of electrical machinery, reduction of the use of phytosanitary products and chemical fertilisers and an increase in the variety of tree species adapted to the climate and with low water requirements. Carbon and water footprint monitoring is carried out, optimising the use of water resources, with irrigation audits conducted in collaboration with the Polytechnic University.  The contract boasts a workforce of around 140 people and the entire vehicle fleet presents the ECO or ZERO EMISSION environmental label. There are also plans to gradually integrate personnel at risk of exclusion through FCC Equal, the Special Employment Centre for the social and occupational integration of people with disabilities promoted by FCC Medio Ambiente.

EUROPEAN GREEN CAPITAL

Valencia will be the European Green Capital in 2024, as decided by the European Commission in October 2022. Since the official presentation of the project on 1st June 2021, FCC Medio Ambiente has unreservedly supported the candidacy. In the words of its chief executive officer, Jordi Payet, the company is a pioneer in providing decarbonisation solutions and has been developing electric mobility technology for more than 50 years with the aim of reducing greenhouse gases: "We are marching together along the path of sustainability and defence of the environment".