With an investment of 1.5 million euros per year, the Gavà-Viladecans sorting plant will be able to increase its container recycling capacity by 40%.
The goal is to increase the number of containers recycled from 24,000 to 33,000 tons per year.
The investment budget includes the hiring and training of personnel for a new night shift through the incorporation of 16 workers.
This new shift, which was added to treat a greater volume of waste, seeks to process all the containers unloaded by the garbage trucks. The new shift will move to a 24-hour operation for five days.
Thus, with three shifts of 8 hours each, the annual processing capacity will increase by almost 40%.
It is estimated that the total workforce will consist of approximately 50 employees.
Gavà-Viladecans plant increases its operations
Due to increased social awareness of the impact of plastic and packaging on the environment, the amount of packaging and bags in yellow garbage cans through separate collection or smart garbage cans is increasing.
This growth in the volume of plastic collected has led to the need to recycle and thus to increase the capacity of the Gavà-Viladecans sorting plant.
The plant separates and presses the containers and provides this service to half of the municipalities of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, AMB, complemented by another in Montcada i Reixac.
In fact, more than 100 garbage trucks pass through the plant every day, carrying the containers collected in the yellow garbage cans.
When they are unloaded onto belts, they are separated according to type: cans, bottles, shoes, toys, aluminum wrappers, trays, caps, among other items.
In an initial phase, a machine filters them by size and discards what cannot be recycled.
The next step is a manual check and pressing. After this process, the resulting bales are auctioned or sent to recycling companies.
Container sorting centers in Catalonia
The growth in recycling is not only in the AMB, but in Catalonia as a whole, where there are a total of 13 container sorting centers.
In fact, Ecoembes in Cataluny (a private organization and technical advisor to sorting plants), determined that during 2021 a total of 279,000 tons of packaging were recycled in this autonomous community.
It also forecasts a 7% year-on-year growth in plastics recycled last year, a percentage that exceeds the Spanish average.
This percentage growth is concentrated mainly in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, where it increased by 15%, thanks to new collection strategies and contracts, as well as the promotion of selective collection and other recycling mechanisms.
