The City of London Corporation has awarded a new waste collection, street cleansing and ancillary services contract to Veolia.

As part of the contract, it aims to become the first authority in the UK to run a fully electric fleet of Refuse Collection Vehicles (RCVs).

Veolia’s RCVs will be equipped with 360-degree cameras and audible warning reversal systems to improve safety.

The vehicles will use on-board weighing equipment to digitally record bin weights at residential properties, enabling recycling performance to be efficiently calculated. And street cleaners will carry hand-held devices for on-the-go reporting and job completion.

All vehicles will be digitally tracked to monitor and auto-allocate cleansing tasks dependant on geographical location and capacity.

The contract will deliver 74 solar auto-compacting BigBelly bins which send notifications to collection crews when they are full, allowing more waste to be collected.

The new portfolio will see Veolia managing a raft of services in the Square Mile, including: domestic waste collection; commercial waste; recycling collections; street cleansing; and vehicle maintenance.

Gavin Graveson, executive vice-president for Veolia UK and Ireland, said: “The new fleet of electric vehicles will play a significant role in improving local air quality, with real-time data technologies delivering greater synergies between collections and street cleansing operations.”

Veolia was appointed following a competitive tender process, with the electric fleet to be mobilised within the first year of contract.

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