Without prior announcement or great splendor, the Lugo cleaning and garbage collection service changed hands in the early hours of this Monday, within the period established after the signing of the contract with EcoLugo, the name chosen by the companies that were awarded the contract that is currently It is the largest municipal contract, after a long bidding process that was full of resources from some of the competing firms.The transfer takes place in the middle of summer, with part of the workforce on vacation, which, added to the fact that much of the new material and machinery will take time to arrive, changes will be perceived little by little.The cleaning and garbage collection contract had expired since 2017At the moment, the most visible are the new work uniforms and the incorporation of some new material, which in some cases does not convince those who handle it.The street sweepers seem pleased with the carts, but complain that the large dust pans they used before have been replaced by impractical shovels.On the first day of EcoLugo it was also possible to see several new brushcutters and hand blowers, vans and a brushcutter tractor, in addition to the one that already existed, for which the two worked yesterday.EcoLugo also appointed a new boss, who comes from Narón, and renewed for this month the vacation substitution contracts that Urbaser had been using in the summer season.The staff is waiting for a formal meeting to find out about the plans of the new company, which is actually a temporary union of Copasa, Geseco and Setec Building, all of Galician origin.EcoLugo has one year to build a warehouse and a biogas plant in As Gándaras and for now it operates from a rented warehouse in O Ceao —the former headquarters of Lyteica— and from various barracks in the city, from where the sweepers leave.They are in Clérigos, San Isidro, Río Ser and Rampa de Claudio López.Two are currently operational.The Council will pay some 13 million euros a year to EcoLugo due to the expansion of the services that will be providedThe local government will inform this Tuesday of the change in management of a service for which the Council will pay about 13 million euros a year, almost double the budget allocated until now.The increase occurs in part because the city has been growing and there are more areas to be cleaned since some services will be intensified and some new ones will be launched.Among these, the one that will have the most impact will be the incorporation of the brown container, exclusively for organic waste, which will be sent to a plant for composting, as required by the EU since this year.It is also planned to install 30 community composters, to which pruning and public garden waste will also go, and deliver 1,114 individual composters to single-family homes, in addition to 400 brown buckets for the organic fraction of large producers of this type of waste, for the that there will be a differentiated collection.The goal is to increase the percentage of solid urban waste that is recycled to 50%, a figure that is still far away, in line with what the EU is asking for and with the sustainable city model advocated by the Lara Méndez government.The brown containers and the rest will begin to arrive predictably after the summer, although it is difficult to set a date, says the local government, due to the market situation.At this time there is a significant demand for material and machinery due to the fact that some other large contracts have just been signed in Spain and that there are other factors that condition manufacturing, from raw materials to the cost of energy.It also remains to close the destination of the waste that will go to the brown container and to the buckets that will be delivered to large producers of organic waste.The collection will be done by EcoLugo and a company authorized to treat this type of waste will take it to its plant for composting.The local government explored various possibilities, even with a company from Lugo, but at the moment there is no agreement, he acknowledged yesterday.However, he assures that this issue will not be a brake on the implementation of the selective collection system for organic waste.EcoLugo must increase the number of existing containers in the city from 3,700 to 4,200 and intensify cleaning at many levels, after the deterioration suffered by urban sanitation in recent years.The PP regretted that the local government took five years to regularize the service, with an expired contract since 2017.