Geocycle España, a Holcim Group company responsible for the sustainable treatment of industrial waste through co-processing, closed 2021 by making possible the energy recovery of more than 45,500 tonnes of waste, thus boosting the development of the circular economy.
With the aim of providing cleaner solutions, in 2019, the plant’s new solids shredding line came into operation. Since then, Geocycle has managed to prevent more than 8,000 tonnes of waste from ending up in landfills. The facility, a pioneer in Spain, makes it possible to recover energy from this waste through a complex treatment process that allows its subsequent use as an energy recoverable material.
Cristina Gómez, plant manager, emphasises that “as a provider of solutions for the circular economy, our objective is to re-evaluate the challenges involved in waste management, incorporating it back into the value chain to be recycled. From the Albox plant, together with our customers, we continue working to achieve a future without waste”.
Among the milestones achieved last year by Geocycle is the award of its first ‘Calculo y Reduzco’ seal – granted at the beginning of last year by the Spanish Office for Climate Change (OECC) of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) – thanks to a reduction of more than 8.47% of its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions linked to fuel consumption (scope 1) and energy consumption (scope 2) in the period 2017-2019. This distinction was again achieved by the plant at the end of 2021 for the reduction of 15.76% of its emissions in the three-year period 2018-2020.
In terms of environmental improvements, last year, Geocycle España invested more than 90,000 euros in the renewal of the atmospheric emissions control equipment for others with the latest technology that improve the precision and digitalisation of the measurement of the parameters.
The Albox plant, which generates 110 direct and indirect jobs, contributed more than 1.7 million euros to the economy of the Almanzora region in 2021, a figure resulting from the contracting of services, social projects, taxes and salaries, among others.