Danish private collection company Harm Mammen & Sønner and utility company Arwos have joined forces against noise. In 2015, all the household refuse in the municipality of Aabenraa will be collected with 9 “silent” refuse trucks.

Ms. Stinne Stokkebo is responsible for the outsourcing of waste collection at Arwos. She explains why silence is important:

”In our region, we have to collect waste very early in the morning. Complete silence may be hard to get in the city, but it is our vision not to disturb the people when we can avoid this. So, in order to improve our service level to the community, we demanded solutions for noise reduction in our latest tender for waste collection."

Ms. Stokkebo continues: ”When you talk to people today, they confirm that they do not hear the refuse truck during collection. In the beginning, people sometimes were too late with the container, as they did not notice the truck coming. In addition, the lower noise level also helps us to prevent hearing damage to the operators. When noise levels exceed 85 dB, you can expect that 5% of the operators would eventually suffer from such damage".

The battery driven Banke E-PTO was not the only technical solution to comply with the tender demands of Arwos. However, Harm Mammen & Sønner deliberately chose the Banke E-PTO based on their experience with an E-PTO fitted refuse truck they have been operating since 2012.

Ms. Vivi Mammen, Administration Coordinator of Harm Mammen & Sønner, summarizes: "The Banke system has proven itself to reduce the noise to the required tender levels in daily practice and over a longer period of time. And there were no technical issues that stopped us from collecting waste”. 

Arwos is a utility company for the municipality of Aabenraa founded in 2010. Arwos is responsible for the drinking water, wastewater and refuse handling of its 59,600 inhabitants. Each year 13 million kg of household waste is collected.

Harm Mammen & Sønner is a privately owned company founded in 1976. The company has collected municipal refuse since 1981. In 2008 they started collecting waste for the municipality of Aabenraa.