What Happened?
Saskatoon plans to spent $1.2 million on tagging and tracking technology that will monitor 66,000 garbage pickup containers to save $200,000 annually on inefficiencies such as missed pickups. The city will attach black tags onto residential garbage containers which will work like key cards and scan when they are emptied by collection trucks.
Goal
The black tags to be attached to the garbage containers will have bar codes on them that link the items to the owner’s address. The 21 garbage collection trucks operated by the city will have two cameras to monitor what is being dumped into the truck and have recordings of any problems that may arise with the black tags.
When residents do not get their garbage picked up, it ends up costing taxpayers money. The city’s collection rate is estimated around 99.5 percent, but that burden of the 0.5 percent in missed pickups totals around $150,000 a year. In April 2013, the collection rate for the black garbage containers was 80 to 90 percent. This past April, the rate dropped to 50 to 60 percent.
The city wants to track garbage collection and get a better idea of the level of service needed to accommodate residents who may be throwing away less and recycling more items. The data collected by the black tags will help city officials make efficient changes to routes and schedules to ensure pickups are needed and optimized. In the future, the tags may evolve to illustrate how a household makes use of garbage collection to further refine the public service.
How It Works
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology created trash tags to measure the location of the containers using a cellular network. The exact position of the tag is determined by the signal strength from cell towers nearby, also known as cellular triangulation, as well as GPS technology. By combining the two solutions, MIT researchers are able to leverage the accuracy of GPS technology with the ability to pick up tag signals from inside buildings that is possible with cellular triangulation.
In the future, MIT researchers expect the cellular triangulation and GPS technologies will continue to evolve and become stronger and more accurate in their tracking capabilities. The tags will not only emit signals through buildings and other materials, but be able to be tracked across international borders.
Modern Application
In Cambodia, the amount of garbage being created by residents is quickly exceeding pickup capabilities. In Phnom Penh, the local population has grown from 1.2 million in 2000 to 2.2 million currently. The city public service agencies have struggled to keep pace with the skyrocketing population, resulting in backlog projects and maintenance work.
City officials are planning to install GPS systems on garbage trucks and mapping software to streamline collections and identify where inefficiencies may arise along pickup routes. The data collected from the system will be accessible online and easily reported to decision makers to aid in adjusting collection strategies and investment in new resources.
Cleaning Up
Gov1 has reported on several cases where innovating trash collection and management has become a top priority of local governments.