A hundred information staff will be helping raise awareness among residents, businesses and tourists in the city on how to reduce the generation of waste and improve cleanliness in the streets. The campaign gets under way this month and will run until January next year.

“To keep Barcelona clean, ongoing improvements to municipal services are needed, and citizens need to be co-responsible”, explained the Commissioner for Ecology, Frederic Ximeno, describing the campaign. The idea is for citizens and commerce to have greater information and awareness on street cleaning services and waste collection systems, getting them more involved in keeping the city clean and tidy. The main goals include:

Identifying and addressing bad practices by citizens.

Identifying establishments which don’t suitably deal with the waste they generate.

Improving people’s perception of cleanliness in the city.

Raising public awareness on the need to collaborate to keep streets clean.

Raising awareness among establishments and getting them involved in the correct separation of waste.

To achieve this, the campaign will include 100 information staff (80 to provide information for the public and 20 for commerce), and 6 coordinators. The staff will directly approach city residents, tourists, organisations, dog owners and commercial establishments, particularly bars and restaurants. The information staff will be present in the city’s streets throughout the day (from 10 am to 2 pm and from 4 to 9 pm).

The profiles of the staff are varied, most of them having an environmental or scientific background, followed by others with social backgrounds. They also have different nationalities, priority being given to people from countries which are most represented in Barcelona, such as Arab countries, Pakistan, China and Philippines. The body of information staff also includes people who speak various other languages, to be able to communicate with a public from abroad and with tourists. “The intention is for a close and direct relationship with citizens, and that’s why we’ve recruited people with different nationalities”, explained Frederic Ximeno.

The personnel will work with tablets using a system to process and analyse all the data and information collected. According to Ximeno, “this constant information will enable us to take decisions and measures to weigh up whether we need to run other more specific campaigns”.

The campaign has a budget of 4 million euros, which comes from the communication package set out in the waste collection contract.