Mataró City Council (Barcelona) has once again placed its trust in FCC Medio Ambiente and has awarded the firm the municipal solid waste collection and street and beach cleansing services contract for a 5-year term. The contract, which started in June, represents an order book value worth €50.86 million. FCC Medio Ambiente has been continuously serving the inhabitants of Mataró for over 50 years.

This contract highlights Mataró City Council's commitment to sustainability and to the urban environment, as more than 36% of the service vehicles and many tools and equipment will be electric, with the consequent benefits in terms of polluting emissions and noise, carbon footprint and energy efficiency for the urban environment.

In order to serve the nearly 129,000 inhabitants of the town and deliver a collection and transport service for more than 51,000 tonnes per year of waste from different fractions, the service will have a fleet of 28 vehicles.  The most important new features of the collection service are the implementation as a pilot test of dual-compartment, door-to-door waste collection in one of the residential neighbourhoods of the municipality and the creation of a new service of pop-up mobile platforms for domestic waste collection in the city centre, which will be located in the afternoon and removed at night, with the consequent removal of the existing fixed and underground containers in this area of the municipality.

A pilot test will also be carried out with locked containers and access control in order to increase selective collection and reduce the refusal fraction; and trade collection will be strengthened with the implementation of the 5th recyclable fraction (organic material) downtown and in main commercial streets.

As for the street cleaning service, which will cover 308 kilometres of streets and will have a fleet of 43 vehicles, a new night-time street washdown service will be set up in the city centre. It should be noted that manual sweeping with auxiliary vehicles will be fully carried out with a 100% electric fleet and that the cleaning of container locations will be reinforced with an increase in the number of litter patrol brigades on three shifts per day, seven days a week.

The beach cleaning service is also considered at this contract, with a plan adapted to its seasonal needs, which will cover 2 kilometres of coastline and will use two tractors with sieving machines for mechanical cleaning and a 4x4, open-box vehicle.

The contract has a workforce of 199 people and, in the social sphere, it is worth highlighting the hiring of staff with intellectual disabilities for the beach cleaning service and supporting the bulky item collection service, with the help of the local entity Fundació Maresme. In other subjects, with the goal of responding to citizens' concerns and complaints and to inform and promote the public services provided, a new Community Manager will be hired.

Regarding the technological achievements of the contract, monitoring and tag-reading of all waste collections must be highlighted, as well as the implementation of volumetric sensors for glass collection and the establishment of dynamic routes and, finally, providing all staff with smartphones in order to report and solve incidents and the consolidation of the mobile application that will allow every user to report any events in direct communication with the service teams.