In recent years, some cities have chosen to install “smart” garbage bins, that is, equipped with sensors that monitor the volume of waste and therefore the level of filling. The information is instantly transmitted to the operations center, notifying when and if it is time to collect the waste. Several analyzes, wrote the Wall Street Journal, have shown that emptying the bins before they are full makes collection more efficient and less wasteful and in Italy, with smart bins, Milan is also experimenting with it.
Manuel Maestrini, founder and director of NordSense, a Californian company that produces smart sensors for garbage cans, explained that their technology reduces collection costs and emissions by 50 percent: “It takes about 30 seconds to empty a bin that it is not full. If, on the other hand, the basket overflows, it takes a lot more ». The time and costs also increase when the garbage is dumped on the floor, next to the bin because that bin has not been emptied. Furthermore, the collection vehicles can plan the itinerary by going directly to the bins that must actually be emptied, avoiding unnecessary stops that involve wasting time, resources and traffic. For Maestrini, tackling the problem of insufficient space for waste by adding other bins only increases the problem, with a sort of “ripple effect”.
NordSense has supplied its technology to the cities of San Francisco (United States), Copenhagen (Denmark) and Netanya (Israel). More than 1,000 smart bins have been installed in San Francisco with an 80 percent reduction in full bins and a 66 percent reduction in specific street cleaning requests, NordSense says. The Copenhagen administration – which launched the experimentation of “smart” bins in 2016 – has in turn calculated a 33% saving in waste collection costs by intervening on the bins that are at least 25% full.
There are several companies that provide “smart” bin technology. The administration of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has made a four-year agreement to have 1,200 “smart” dumpsters with Victor Stanley Inc., based in Maryland. Matthew Jacob, an analyst with the city's innovation department, said the data collected during the test phase showed that smart bins can help reduce the hours normally spent collecting waste by about 50 percent.
The sensors of the “intelligent” baskets, in addition to checking the quantity of waste, allow you to monitor if the bin has been overturned, to detect the internal temperature to know if something is burning or to understand if there are movements, for example of mice. Some companies are working on sensors that can also detect odors.
Even in Italy there are cities that are experimenting with this type of technology, but in a rather reduced form: Florence, Crema, Trieste or Padua. In Milan, Amsa, the A2A Group company that manages the environmental hygiene service throughout the public territory, instead placed 12,550 “smart” baskets, developed with Cefriel-Politecnico di Milano, a subsidiary company of the Politecnico specialized in innovation projects digital. The containers are located in the streets and squares of all nine municipalities, excluding the green areas, where traditional baskets are present, but the project is still in the test phase and the analyzes to acquire data are still ongoing.
The “smart” bins in Milan are equipped with a sensor that constantly performs a complete scan not only on the filling level, but also on the frequency and time of use. Through a wireless network, the bin sends information on the status of the containers to the Amsa operations center: completely empty, half or two-thirds full or obstructed on the surface. All this information gives the possibility to improve the service, but also to “personalize it” and to understand what specific needs there are in the different areas.
