Envac joins €25m EU-funded sustainability project
Envac, the global pioneer of underground automated vacuum waste collection, has become an official partner in the EU-funded GrowSmarter project. The five-year project, which forms part of the Horizon 2020 programme, is to be coordinated by the City of Stockholm and aims to help make Europe more sustainable and environmentally ‘smarter’.
Stockholm, Barcelona and Cologne will act as ‘lighthouse cities’ and be responsible for implementing 12 smart city solutions throughout the duration of the project, with the aim of reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions attributable to transport miles by 60 per cent.
Envac is one of 37 organisations from the private and public sectors to contribute towards the project’s success. It is the only commercial partner to provide a waste handling technology during the entirety of the project.
On supporting the project Jonas Törnblom, Senior Vice President at Envac AB, comments: “Ensuring that towns and cities are well-placed to futureproof the communities they support and leave a sustainable legacy that will effectively meet the demands of tomorrow is arguably one of the most important challenges currently facing the world. The GrowSmarter project will facilitate the advancement towards developing more sustainable societies within Europe and play a key role in developing the blueprints for sustainable growth in the future.”
As a GrowSmarter partner Envac plans to introduce its system in Årsta, south of Stockholm’s city centre, with the aim of creating a best practice model of how to successfully integrate sustainable infrastructures. The system will combine Envac’s optical sorting waste technology, which will be governed by WasteSMART* principles, and its recently launched Quantum system.
The project is expected to create 1,500 new jobs over the duration of the project’s lifetime, which runs from 2015 to 2020.
Jonas concludes: “In an age where towns, cities and even entire continents are competing with each other to become more attractive and accessible to a global audience, projects such as GrowSmarter are essential in providing the catalyst needed to promote sustainable growth. As a proponent of developing sustainable communities across the globe, Envac is proud to play a role in this valuable project.”
*WasteSMART
The WasteSMART concept uses RFID sensors to identify the household depositing each waste bag. Colour sensors identify the waste type and weight sensors register the weight of each bag. This allows waste streams to be quantified and individualised for multi-family dwellings, which, until now, has been a problem. The WasteSMART concept is patented.