La Ribera Municipalities Association (Navarre) has once again awarded the contract for selective waste collection and management and operation of the El Culebrete Waste Treatment Centre and landfill to FCC Medio Ambiente, which has been present in the region since 2007. The contract represents an order book value of €71.3 million over the next 10 years and will serve the 19 municipalities that comprise the association, with a total population of 92,500.

The new service will have a team of 65 people and aims to improve recycling rates and boost service efficiency. Among other improvements, it will implement side-loading collection, which, after exhaustive analysis of all container locations, will replace the current rear-loading system wherever possible. Environmental sustainability is particularly important, with the promotion of conscious water consumption through various innovations such as washing lorries using an external automatic washing system, which allows 100% of the water to be recirculated and consumes 35% less energy than traditional manual washing, or the use of rainwater in the service facilities.

Technological innovation is also a key pillar of the renewal, with the centralisation of comprehensive service management on the VISION digital platform, developed exclusively by FCC Medio Ambiente, which enables real-time interaction with incidents, requests from residents and the municipal team. Fifty volumetric sensors will also be installed in the most problematic containers or those furthest from the routes in order to plan collection based on the level of filling, all with the aim of optimising routes and reducing costs.

The selective collection service, which manages around 41,000 tonnes of waste per year, will have a fleet of mostly newly acquired vehicles and machinery, including around twenty collection lorries, both side-loading and rear-loading, a container lorry and a mobile household waste recycling centre. In addition, the container network will be reorganised, a door-to-door system for glass collection will be implemented in the old town of Tudela, headquarters of the Association, to serve hospitality establishments, and the service will be reinforced between August and October due to the festivities in the various municipalities.

The contract includes the management of the control and general maintenance of the El Culebrete Waste Treatment Centre, which receives around 70,000 tonnes of waste annually. With this renewal, the facility is ready to fill the third landfill cell which, once full, will continue with the fourth, for which a collection and covering plan has been drawn up throughout the contract with 300,000 m³ of waste, plus 28,000 m³ of soil, to which will be added a further 1,000 m³ for road conditioning. In the event of filling, the adaptation of a fifth cell is envisaged. The renovation also includes strengthening the control of leachate discharges into groundwater through quarterly sampling and analysis. In addition, it will have new vehicles and machinery such as compactors for spreading and compacting waste, Amplirroll-type trucks or tanker trucks for watering roads and firefighting. Eleven topographical markers will be placed to monitor any earth movements that may occur in the landfill embankment for optimal monitoring of its stability. Work will also be carried out on the landscape regeneration of the access to the landfill, through the planting of native plant species that require less irrigation water. There are also plans to reinforce the control of access by feral animals using special cages, managed by the company GESFAUNA, which will be taken to the Official Animal Collection Centre in the southern part of Navarra.

In terms of social sustainability, the service will employ people with disabilities and women who are victims of gender violence through local city halls' job banks. In addition, a communication campaign has been launched to encourage all citizens to use organic waste bins more, under the slogan ‘More organic than ever’, supported by an increase in the number of brown containers on public thoroughfare. It will consist of graphic material on posters in public buildings, stickers on bins, leaflets, merchandising, social media posts, talks in schools and children's competitions, as well as visits to the El Culebrete plant. All this with the aim of involving citizens in the sustainable transformation of the Association