Shop Street is the main shopping thoroughfare in Galway City and this street and the joining Eyre Square are the focal points for the commercial and tourist activity in the city. Its proximity to the ocean and a stock of older open top bins resulted in a historical problem with seabirds scavenging from the bins, which, in turn was attracting vermin and negative aesthetics around those bins. The overflowing bins were an eyesore in the central area frequented by tourists and created an unfavourable impression of the city to those visitors.
Galway City Council deployed an initial 45 solar compacting PEL120SSB bins around the Eyre Square and upper Shop Street area of the city in June 2019 replacing the existing open top non-compacting bins on a 1:1 basis. The installation had an immediate impact by reducing the number of collection visits required by the council’s collections staff to manage litter in those locations. Historically, the bins around Eyre Square and Shop Street were collected 2-3 times per day. Introduction of the PEL120SSB reduced the number of collection visits to every 2nd day which translates into an 90% reduction in required visits, a 90% reduction in single use plastic bags. This reduction allowed the council to reallocate the collections team staff to other street cleaning duties around the city.
The first review meeting highlighted the decrease in collections visits and raised the question on what is optimised number of bins required for the Shop Street and Eyre Square areas for managing the litter in those areas. Following on from the meeting, Galway City removed all of the remaining open-top non-compacting bins from Eyre Square and Shop Street so that litter management in those areas was with the PEL120SSB SolarStreetBinTM only. This configuration was monitored for a month and at the end of the monitoring period it was found that overall bin collections for the Shop Street and Eyre Square areas had reduced by 90%, achieved by having 50% less bins managing the same volume of waste in a more efficient manner. Following on from these evaluations, Galway City Council ordered a PEL120SSB units which were installed in the Wood Quay and Salthill areas of the city where similar litter collections efficiency gains have been achieved. The SolarStreetbin are monitored by BriteBin Software developed by PEL. BriteBin Software alerts the council when the bins need emptying.
The contract is managed directly by PEL Waste Reduction Equipment staff based at Co. Mayo head office who deal with all maintenance requirements and any technical/non-technical issues arising with this contract.
