Valencia City Council intends to install 266 anti-theft containers on streets throughout the city for cooking oil collection in Valencia, in an effort to make the disposal process simpler and to prevent massive water pollution…
It might be an everyday item, especially in Spain, but cooking oil can be extremely harmful to the environment. Just one litre of cooking oil can contaminate 40,000 litres of water if disposed of in a standard household drain, according to studies. And because water is not an infinite resource, many solutions to this problem have been devised and proposed. Few of them have been sufficiently practical, though. That is now about to change. Valencia City Council has put out a tender for the production and installation of 266 metal containers for cooking oil collection in Valencia. These containers, once completed and designed to be completely safe, will be distributed throughout Valencia’s neighbourhoods and towns for a total cost of €248,000 euros (excluding VAT).
The concept is the brainchild of the Department of Urban Ecology, but it is not entirely novel. Valencia has already installed 95 of these containers in public buildings and collected 30 tonnes of cooking oil by 2020. However, locating the containers in public buildings was not the most practical solution. People who wanted to use them were limited by the hours these buildings were open, which – many residents already know – can be difficult at times in Valencia. As a result, it was decided that the new containers will be located on busy streets and would be accessible 24 hours a day.
Placing the containers on public roads creates a new concern. They can cause serious ecological damage to the environment if stolen or vandalised. And there have been some serious street protests recently, with containers being completely destroyed or set on fire. Burning an oil container would be an ecological disaster in and of itself. With this in mind, the new containers will be designed with a few failsafes, as well as being vandal- and theft-proof, and with an anti-spill liquid retention system that will prevent oil from leaving the container regardless of how hard someone tries to empty it.
On the surface of the containers there will be information on domestic oil recycling and other important waste management facts. Domestic oil collected in this manner will be transported to the Metropolitan Entity for Waste Treatment (EMTRE) plants and converted into biodiesel, resulting in yet another environmental benefit for the project. It’s a win-win for Valencia…
© Oil Be Back: Cooking Oil Collection In Valencia – TheValencian
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