The San Marcos municipalities association (Gipuzkoa) has once again awarded to a joint venture led by FCC Medio Ambiente the selective waste collection service that the company has been providing uninterruptedly since 1995. The contract represents an order book value of almost €52 million for the next 10 years and will have a workforce of 51 people to serve the over 287,000 inhabitants of 8 out of the 10 municipalities that make up the association.

The service started in 1995 collecting only two fractions and has been progressively expanded to currently collect waste from six fractions: paper and cardboard, packaging, organic, residual waste, glass and bulky waste. To collect the 28,350 tonnes per year, the joint venture has acquired 30 new vehicles, nearly half of which are electric, including several high-pressure washing-down cleaning vehicles, open-box trucks, inspection vehicles and state-of-the-art eco-efficient service vans. This acquisition responds to the commitment of the association and its municipalities to the fight against climate change and sustainable urban development.

The renewal introduces important new features, such as the optimisation of routes, especially in streets of difficult access, and the increase in equipment and frequency of pre-collection tasks. Along with the usual selective collection service, door-to-door collection services and the collection of bulky items such as waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) and furniture and similar items at pre-established points on the public thoroughfare are also included. With the addition of a new bi-compartment vehicle, an innovative service can be provided in areas with high density of hotels, restaurants and bars, enabling and easing the simultaneous selective collection of different fractions and thus promoting recycling.

A complete range of management and information gathering tools have been developed specifically for the service which, together with the existence of staff with the necessary training to use and feed them, make it possible to efficiently save and manage all the information related to the service, as well as to easily trace the means and resources allocated to each task at any given time.

This new contract is also committed to the social sustainability of the service and will allocate 5.01% of the budget to the hiring and employment of people from groups at risk of exclusion for cleaning and maintenance of containers, undertaken through a special employment centre.