The municipal cleaning company Sadeco has acquired a new tool to collect bitter oranges from the streets of Córdoba more quickly. It’s about a vibrator that is capable of harvesting 328 orange trees a day, compared to the 60 trees that could be collected manually (228% more). In addition to this vibrator, a machine from Sadeco’s fleet has been adapted to perform the same vibration functions and allow the time for harvesting this fruit to be considerably shortened.
After the vibrators operate, the workers manually review those that have remained on the tree so that the sweepers can then pass by collecting them. These machines began operating on January 15 in the peripheral neighborhood of Villarrubia and will continue throughout the city. Only on the first day of collection have they been collected 380 trees and 11,000 kilos of oranges.
In Córdoba there are 28,764 orange trees spread across 700 streets throughout the city. Sadeco took out a contract for the outsourcing of this collection, which was void, so he ended up going to its job board to recruit 40 people who have already started the campaign. The new hires have been organized into four work groups that work morning and afternoon.
The president of Sadeco, Isabel Albás, has held meetings with the Local Police to coordinate the actions and facilitate with specific traffic cuts the collection of the oranges when the vibrator has already thrown them to the ground. She has also met with the Council of the Citizen Movement to organize the collection schedule which, in principle, was scheduled to end on April 15. With the new collection methods that Sadeco is using, it is foreseeable that these times will be shortened; in any case, they should not be as long as they were last year when oranges were still being collected from the streets in May.
Although a few years ago the bitter oranges that were collected were partly used for the manufacture of jam, but due to a change in regulations that is no longer possible due to the impossibility of certifying the traceability of the fruits.
