The power outage paralyzes the container classification plant of the Complejo Ambiental de Tenerife, located in the municipality of Arico. The suspension of the service by Endesa occurred on Wednesday and this thursday the installation was still not workingas confirmed by the Councilor for Sustainable Development and Fight against Climate Change of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Javier Rodríguez Medina.
The head of the Environmental Complex clarified that he expects electricity to return “immediately”it may even be that this very Friday, after the Cabildo, which manages the center that treats all the garbage generated by the Island, has asked Endesa to restore electricity. Rodríguez Medina also clarified that the standstill of the machinery of this plant, which separates the containers for their subsequent recycling, will not cause this waste to be thrown away without the corresponding treatment.
«No container is going to go directly to the landfill. We have enough space in this plant to accumulate them, in such a way that when electricity is recovered, it will be classified again for treatment,” the island councilor of the government group chaired by Pedro Martín wanted to make clear.
A confusion in the process
He problemdetailed Javier Rodríguez Medina, is due to a confusion in the processing of the line change from low to medium and high voltage of the power supply of the plant. «We requested that the connection go from low to medium and high voltage, for which we required the modification of the electrical station. We request all changes to the corresponding administration, the Ministry of Industry of the Government of the Canary Islands. We had his approval.”
Rodríguez Medina adds that Endesa notified that the change had to be made within one year. We had processed all the permits but Endesa communicated that the one-year term was running out to the Canarian Government, not to the Cabildo de Tenerife. So, the company decided to cut the service this Wednesday.
The Cabildo hopes that the service will be restored immediately
This packaging classification plant, managed by the Island Society for the Promotion of Persons with Disabilities (Sinpromi), dependent on the Cabildo de Tenerife, was renovated in 2021. Improvements were presented in September. Its automation has made it possible to increase its performance by going from treating 2.66 tons per hour to 4.7 tons. In annual terms, it went from 6,000 tons to more than 15,600, with a capacity to reach 19,000 tons. It is the result of improving the efficiency in the separation of this waste, especially plastic bottles, cans and tubs, soft drink cans and briks.
Improvement of the packaging plant
This action to adapt the layout of the Arico Complex was carried out thanks to an investment of the Tenerife Corporation of more than 2.8 million euros. For this reason, from the beginning of the summer of 2021, the process went from a manual process to an automatic one, increasing the treatment capacity and also the energy needs.
The plant was automated in the summer of 2021
The objective of this improvement is to maximize the recovery of recyclable materials during the selection process of waste from selective municipal collection, deposited in the yellow container in Tenerife, La Gomera and El Hierro. Currently, they have 4,352, 145 and 121 containers, respectively, in which 11,158,750 tons of light packaging were collected during 2020, the Cabildo said in a statement in 2021.
As a consequence of these modifications, the electricity supply had to be improved. The insular government (PSOE and citizens) works at full speed to restart the plant and prevent another electric service problem from happening again in the future.
