Green and Clean Electric Trash Collection Comes to Paris

Paris has become the first city in France to throw out its fossil-fuel powered garbage trucks and replace them with clean, green electric ones.

The wealthy suburb of Courbevoie boasts a fleet of eleven all-electric trucks.

That translates to a saving of 130 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per truck per year.

Cyril Fraissinet is running the project.

[Cyril Fraissinet, Industrial Director, SITA France]:

„To date, it’s the first world new generation 100% electric vehicle equipped with lithium-ion batteries, and in a way, it’s a French product because all the parts are put together in France.“

Five strings of seven interchangeable battery packs power the trucks, enabling the same performance levels as their conventional counterparts.

[Cyril Fraissinet, Industrial Director, SITA France]:

„We gathered an equipment manufacturer PVI, an equipment supplier CeMAT and a battery supplier Dow Kokam, and everyone worked together, the engineers worked hard with real challenges such as how to get all this to work, how to lower the electric consumption wherever it’s possible, and obtain the vehicle you are seeing today.“

A fully charged truck can run for eight hours of refuse collection before the batteries need recharging.

The electric trucks are easy on the environment – and the ears, making very little noise.

And the constant whine of trash being compacted in the old carts is now replaced by a far quieter whir.

[Lakdar Benzerrouk, SITA Truck Driver]:

„With this refuse truck we are 100% safe. Especially for the refuse collectors in the back. Myself I am driving, but it’s important for the refuse collectors in the back. I can see them thanks to the camera, I know when I can pull out, when I can stop.“

Compaction takes place while the truck is rolling, making the process almost inaudible.

The fact that they are nearly noise-free will, in time,  allow city officials to shift collections to the night, freeing up busy roads that are normally jammed behind garbage trucks at rush hour.

Foto: NTD