The company we show you in this edition was founded in the city of Guimarães, Portugal, 11 years ago. We are talking about EcoMovimento, a licensed operator for waste management that currently develops its activity in three large sectors: HORECA, industrial and domestic. With a range of operations that goes from Leiria to the North of Portugal, with a greater incidence in the districts of Braga and Porto, EcoMovimento processed around 1,200,000 liters of used cooking oil (UCO) in 2021, which represented a growth of 40% compared to the values achieved in 2020.

What for many is trash, for EcoMovimento it is a precious asset that can and should be valued and recycled. The truth is that cooking oils were eliminated uncontrollably for many years, causing large-scale negative impacts on several fronts. Aware of this reality and the importance of presenting services and solutions capable of responding to this problem, the company from Guimarães has a collection system for UCO in the HORECA and industrial sectors. It may seem utopian, but on the vast majority of occasions, just one contact is enough for the collection service to be speeded up in this sector. “Once all the establishment's needs have been determined and all the basic contact information has been noted, the collection service is ready to be scheduled”, explains Hugo Rocha, manager of EcoMovimento. With the aim of providing an increasingly accessible, close and uncomplicated service to all its customers, the company has the EcoMovimento Mobile App available, which allows, among other features, to request and schedule collections of UCO, consult the collection history or consult and download the Waste Tracking Guide.

If you want to send the cooking oil you use in your kitchen for recycling, EcoMovimento also has GOTA, the UCO container, distributed in various parts of the country, designed to collect domestic used cooking oils. Launched in 2020, GOTA, exclusive to EcoMovimento, is already present in more than a thousand collection points. If you have one of them near you, the process is very simple, as Hugo Rocha explains: “Once cooled, the UCO must be transferred to plastic bottles, closing it as best as possible. Once this process is complete, the bottles are ready to be placed in GOTA.”

Once collected by the EcoMovimento team, the UCO arrives at its facilities where it is subjected to a physical process (filtration and decantation), free from the use of chemicals, allowing it to reach an optimal quality level and then be sent to the Biofuel producing industry. “Prolonging the value chain of a residue that would previously be wasted is one of the key points of recycling used cooking oil. It is possible to obtain renewable products based on cleaner, sustainable and ecological energy.”

EcoMovimento's mission is not only about continually seeking to improve the environment, but also about raising awareness that we all have an environmental and social responsibility. “We believe that the conditions that GOTA provide to citizens to recycle their used cooking oil represents a force capable of uniting efforts around this cause”. In this mission, EcoMovimento does not forget children and their ability to develop and implement a habit within their families, and therefore, from a very early age, the company developed the School Project, providing oil containers that make it possible to instill the habit of recycling with the youngest. “We will always defend that recycling is for everyone, regardless of age.”

Talking about EcoMovimento is talking about a company focused on the sustainability of the planet, which promises in the future to continue investing in the development of the best and most complete services. “EcoMovimento’s focus, with regard to the HORECA and industrial sector, will always be to improve service methodologies that allow it to increase its quality. For the domestic sector, we assume that creating better conditions for recycling oil produced in the Portuguese home is the biggest and most important challenge”.