The Valencia City Council has begun the renovation of the city's container park with 10,000 new units as part of the implementation of the new cleaning and waste collection contract in Valencia. Specifically, up to 8,600 old containers will be replaced with new ICON model containers and 1,400 units will be reserved for replacements due to breakage and vandalism.
As explained by municipal sources in a statement, the new containers will have a greater capacity from 2,800 liters to 3,000 liters, and their accessibility has been improved since they have different positions to open them, for people with reduced mobility. In addition, they all have a QR code so that the user can have information on the type of waste that goes in each of them.
The Councilor for the Waste Area, Carlos Mundina, has indicated that the first containers "have already been installed in the Malvarrosa area and will continue in a phased manner through the different neighborhoods of the city." The government chaired by María José Catalá, the City Council points out, has set itself the objective of improving the cleaning of streets, squares and gardens in the city, and this change of containers is part of the improvement plan.
The winning companies will supply a total of 10,000 side-loading containers, of 3,000 liters each, to renew the old ones during the coming months until July, the date on which the replacement process is expected to be completed.
Since the beginning of March, in a warehouse in the Aldaia industrial estate, the containers have been assembled for later placement on the streets of the city. In this warehouse, an assembly line has been installed made up of 18 workers who assemble the parts and leave the units prepared and vinyled for start-up.
The distribution of the new units will be carried out in fractions. Thus, 5,000 gray containers will be allocated to the rest fraction; 2,000 blue ones for paper-cardboard and, of this amount, 700 units will be to complete container islands that lack cardboard containers and the other 1,300 units will be to replace old ones. In addition, 1,500 yellow containers will be for the packaging fraction; and 100 brown ones for organic matter with 2,000 liters of capacity.
The container model chosen is ICON and among its characteristics it stands out that the rest fraction and organic fraction units have a manual lever and pedal; that the pedal has different heights and positions to adapt to different curb heights; and that the containers for paper-cardboard and packaging are provided with larger openings to facilitate their use.
