The Consell de Mallorca promotes electric mobility in the service of urban solid waste. The island institution, with the collaboration of TIRME, MARANEU and VOLVO, incorporates the first electric tractor in the entire national territory to transport municipal waste from the transfer stations.

It is estimated that the start-up of this new 100% electric vehicle will mean a saving of around 40,000 liters of diesel per year, which means reducing the emission of around 100,000 kg of CO₂ equivalent.

The presentation of this new electric vehicle took place this Monday in Binissalem and was attended by the General Director of TIRME, Antonio Pons; the Second Vice President of the Consell de Mallorca and Minister of the Environment, Rural Affairs and Sports, Pedro Bestard and the Island Director of Waste, Margalida Roig.

To date, the transfer of municipal waste from the transfer stations to the treatment plants is one of the tasks carried out by the public waste treatment service of Mallorca, managed by TIRME and owned by the Consell de Mallorca. The urban waste that the municipalities and associations collect in their towns and municipalities arrive at these transfer stations.

Once unloaded, the waste is compacted and transported to the treatment plants using larger capacity trucks, with tractors that use fossil fuels. This public service has five transfer stations located in Calvià, Binissalem, Manacor, Campos and Alcúdia.

100% electric tractors

The initiative to use 100% electric tractors to carry out this type of transport has been possible thanks to the collaboration of TIRME, MARANEU and VOLVO. TIRME is the public service concessionaire company, MARANEU is the company contracted to carry out this transportation and, therefore, the owner of the electric tractor unit; and VOLVO is the manufacturing company of it.

The start-up of this electric tractor has also been possible thanks to the subsidy that enables the transformation of fleets granted by the General Directorate of Mobility of the Department of Housing, Territory and Mobility of the Government of the Balearic Islands, a subsidy included within the Plan of Recovery, Transformation and Resilience, financed by the European Union «Next Generation EU».

Councilor Pedro Bestard has highlighted "the importance of advancing the implementation of electric vehicles in the transport of urban waste, which will allow Mallorca to have a more ecological treatment service, thus contributing to the reduction of polluting emissions." to the atmosphere".

For his part, Antonio Pons has pointed out that “within the framework of TIRME's strategy to promote circularity and sustainability, the new electric tractor is a new tool that is proving to be very efficient, since it reduces greenhouse gas emissions. greenhouse and uses the waste it transports as fuel.”

The 100% electric tractor that begins its service is a 10-ton vehicle that has six built-in batteries of 90 kWh each. Its maximum speed is 90 km/h. The tests that have been carried out show that this tractor will be able to make three round trips from the Binissalem Transfer Station to the Mallorca Environmental Technologies Park.

To these trips it will be necessary to add internal traffic within the park, such as, for example, transporting the reject from the packaging selection plant to the energy recovery plant. In total, the autonomy of this new tractor will be about 300 km.