Today, June 5, we celebrate World Environment Day, a day that focuses on the importance of preserving our environment and raising environmental awareness.
Climate change, energy transition, sustainable mobility, and the preservation of natural spaces are fundamental issues when we talk about sustainability, and they are part of the great debates that mark and will mark the future of our cities and our society. But it is also everyday actions, the decisions we make each day, the way we use available resources, or how we manage the waste we generate that ultimately determines our ability to move towards a more resilient model, prepared to adapt to a changing and increasingly demanding environment.
In this context, urban services become essential for municipalities and for the lives of their inhabitants. In Barcelona, thousands of professionals work every day to maintain public spaces in good condition, carrying out a task that is often invisible but has a great impact on the well-being of citizens and the sustainability of the city.
From FCC Medio Ambiente, with more than 115 years of involvement in Barcelona's urban services, we have witnessed their evolution and how they have transformed to respond to environmental, social, and technological challenges. Now it is not only about ensuring the proper functioning of the city and that it is clean and prepared every day for the people who live in it, but also about actively contributing to decarbonization, to a more efficient use of resources, and to making Barcelona a more competitive and livable city.
"Urban services have ceased to be essentially operational, to become a strategic tool to advance towards the environmental objectives that the European Union and society demand from us"
The large volume of people and machinery that go out to our cities every day to provide urban services of all kinds also makes us an ally and an instrument to facilitate public policies on gender, inclusion, mobility, or circular economy, among others, that our City Councils want to promote in their government action.
Urban services have ceased to be essentially operational, to become a strategic tool to advance towards the environmental objectives that the European Union and society demand from us. This transformation requires taking advantage of the opportunities offered by new technologies, digitalization, and other innovative solutions to reduce emissions and move towards more sustainable urban models.
And this is the vision that has guided FCC Medio Ambiente. In recent years, it has promoted projects linked to sustainable mobility, the incorporation of more efficient technologies, and the transformation of waste into new energy resources. In Barcelona, specifically, dozens of projects have been launched, such as the first 100% electric fleet with heavy-tonnage vehicles for the cleaning and maintenance of its sewage network, the first collection truck with a hydrogen fuel cell, or the development of an application that contains artificial intelligence technology to identify graffiti, a very powerful tool in the fight against the soiling of our facades and public furniture.
On this World Environment Day, it is important to remember that the future of our cities will also depend, among other issues, on how we manage what happens every day in the streets and on the collective capacity to contribute to a more efficient, livable, and environmentally friendly city model. The great opportunity for Barcelona is to continue demonstrating that it is possible to grow, innovate, and generate prosperity by making sustainability a lever for transformation and progress.