Formato Verde, located in the Industrial Park of San Cibrao das Viñas (Ourense), has been operating in the urban waste collection equipment sector since 2001. Its philosophy is based on two key premises. The first is that the container is the element by which the citizen judges the entire collection system and that, in addition, it affects the aesthetics of the entire city. The second is clearly focused on contributing, through its contribution to the market, to improving recycling rates and facilitating use. "We believe that we must make aesthetic products, treating the container as urban furniture. In addition, we must incorporate improvements that result in advantages for the citizen," explains Marcos R. Jorge, administrator.

Formato Verde has a long list of contributions to the market, many of them patented, and continuous development to boost its competitiveness is part of the company's daily business. "We have brought to the market the concept of the aesthetic container, the concept of lower height to reduce the visual impact and the risk of being run over, the solution of speed in unloading to reduce the time the truck spends on the public road, thus reducing the inconvenience to neighbours in terms of traffic impact, noise, CO2 emissions or fuel consumption. Also the concept of the light lid, the cushioned closure and later, after the appearance of covid-19, the contactless manhole", says Marcos R. Jorge.

Formato Verde is present in Spain and Portugal with its own company and in other regions such as France, Baltic countries and Eastern Europe through distributors.

A Coruña, Lugo, Gijón, Bilbao, Almería, Málaga, Marbella, Ibiza or Oporto are examples of cities where you can see their containers.

Design at the service of innovation

Waste containers are one of the elements with the greatest visual impact in population centers. Designing aesthetic solutions that meet the functional requirements and the specific requirements of the collection system is a challenge that Formato Verde seeks to respond to and that involves balancing multiple factors. "One tends to underestimate the complexity of a container, as it is assimilated to a cube, to a static piece that has no movement. However, the reality is a bit more complex, which is demonstrated by the fact that we are so few manufacturers. Large investments in development, molds and machinery are the main barriers to entry," explains Marcos R. Jorge. "In our case, a typical side-loading container is made up of 81 parts, which come from eight different suppliers, all of them in Galicia. The containers must be compatible in all their lid-opening movements with different makes and models of garbage trucks, while at the same time complying with a series of European standards that restrict the possibilities for development in order to ensure compatibility. In addition, they must provide some functional improvement for the citizen or for the collection company, be competitive in price, stackable so that they can travel without making the product more expensive, easy and cheap to maintain...", he lists.

Support from the DiseñaPeme program

Formato Verde has been one of the beneficiary companies of the DiseñaPeme line, promoted by the Xunta de Galicia through the Galician Innovation Agency. Specifically, it has helped them to design the City.Bin, a new product with which they have managed to integrate design into the strategy, designing a new range of vertical-loading MSW containers for the European market. "This is a disruptive product, a novelty in the MSW sector, with which we have entered the French market and are looking to enter the European market, as it is a market where vertical loading with surface and underground containers predominates," the company explains. The City.Bin family of containers offers the possibility for the same product to have a surface and underground version, with a friendly aesthetic that seeks to minimize the visual impact and thus increase road safety, always within the trend of humanizing cities. In addition, it has been designed taking into account eco-design and carbon footprint reduction techniques, resulting in a sustainable and 100% recyclable product.

One of Formato Verde's current challenges is to respond to the so-called "pay-as-you-throw" approach, i.e., that each citizen pays according to the waste he or she produces. "This is a challenge for the entire sector, and we manufacturers are still a long way from meeting it. In our case, we are developing our own electronics, which identifies the user, limits the amount of waste to be contributed by each opening, informs the truck of the filling level and calculates an optimized route, warns when it has been collected or when it catches fire.... Again, it will not only be necessary to develop it, but to make it stable, reliable, user-friendly, price-competitive, etc." he concludes.