in Barcelona
3 to 5 Nov 2026
The City of Dortmund, in North Rhine-Westphalia, has installed 92 sensor-equipped Big Belly waste bins across 14 green spaces and the city zoo, in a pilot costing about €366,700 net that the city presented to the press on 9 October 2026, according to its official announcement and a Nordstadtblogger report published on 18 October 2026. The bins compress waste, measure their own fill level and transmit it over the mobile network to the city’s parks department, the Grünflächenamt, which uses the data to plan emptying routes instead of visiting every bin on a fixed schedule.
The city describes the project as a pilot, and no further bins are currently planned.
Unit costs and the 65 percent federal share
Of the 92 units, 75 are compactor models priced at roughly €4,000 net each, which comes to €300,000, and 17 are models without a compactor at roughly €3,000 net each, which comes to €51,000. Fire-suppression and fill-level monitoring are included in the unit prices, and a further €15,700 covers delivery, foundations, installation and training, giving the total of €366,700.
The pilot is paid for through Dortmund’s smart city programme, with the Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building (Bundesministerium für Wohnen, Stadtentwicklung und Bauwesen) covering 65 percent, or about €238,355, and the city covering the remaining 35 percent, about €128,345. The average cost per installed unit works out at €3,986 net.
How the bins operate in the field
Each Big Belly unit carries solar panels, so no separate power connection is needed, and a solar-powered compactor presses the waste inside a closed housing that is intended to keep animals from spreading rubbish through the parks. The city says the new models hold more waste than the bins they replace.
The fill-level data feeds a software view in the parks department, where staff see which bins are full, and a heat map is meant to rank locations by use so that an additional bin can be placed where waste accumulates. Bins at locations that prove unsuitable can be moved, and the city intends to judge vandalism risk from how each site performs.
Staff were trained on site by Future Street GmbH, the company that represents Big Belly in Europe and received the order. The award was run jointly by the Grünflächenamt and the city’s smart city team and is complete, and the external contractors that also empty bins, AWO-Werkstätten, Christopherus Haus and DOLOG, are due to be brought onto the system shortly.
Vendor claim and parks department expectations
Thomas Krüger of Future Street said that smart waste systems in public spaces reduce emptying operations by up to 90 percent, which is a manufacturer statement, and the parks department describes its own expected gain in terms of avoided trips and time.
“So können wir unnötige Fahrwege vermeiden, Abläufe wirtschaftlicher gestalten und gleichzeitig Ressourcen schonen” (“That way we can avoid unnecessary trips, make operations more economical and conserve resources at the same time”), said Heiko Just, head of the Grünflächenamt, as quoted by Nordstadtblogger on 18 October 2026.
The saved time is intended for extra cleaning after hot summer days, when parks generate noticeably more waste, and the department also expects less rubbish left beside bins because a full unit can be reached faster.
Reference checks before the award
Before awarding the contract the city consulted several municipalities and zoos that operate smart waste bins, and it reports that their feedback on Big Belly units and on maintenance was very positive, with the manufacturer responding quickly and reliably. The pilot sits within the joint smart city strategy of Dortmund and Schwerte, which the federal ministry supports under its Modellprojekte Smart Cities programme and which spans digital infrastructure, sensors, energy, environment and citizen participation.
A low-tech companion at the zoo and Westfalenpark
Alongside the sensor bins the city has bought litter pickers from the Dortmund firm Pottpicker at €320 each, which visitors can borrow at eight stations in the zoo and the Westfalenpark against a deposit of 50 cents or a token, in the manner of a supermarket trolley. The city is examining further locations for the stations.
Councillor Christian Uhr, whose remit includes the smart city team, called the picker proof that a smart solution does not always have to be highly digital.
Next data points for the pilot
The first route-level evidence will come from the fill-level logs once AWO-Werkstätten, Christopherus Haus and DOLOG are connected, because the 92 units at an average of €3,986 each can then be compared against the fixed-schedule rounds they replace, with the vendor’s up to 90 percent reduction as the upper bound against which any measured saving will be read.
