IFAT ’22: Circular Economy Shines Light on Smart Waste

The World Economic Forum has named the circular economy as the business opportunity of our time. And smart city vendors in particular can benefit from this. Just look at the massive amount of money that investors are pouring into cities. Closed Loop has invested over $45 million to modernize the capabilities of New York City's recycling services. And the European Investment Bank has put forward 2 .7 billion euros for most circular economy projects in a range of locations. Clearly it's a hot topic and one that took center stage at the IFAC conference in Munich. This is a massive fair focused on environmental technologies, but what technologies in particular are leading the conversation? Let's turn our attention to our subscribers who are there at the scene. Freakmobile does with WasteVision, a smart waste company based in the Netherlands. It develops fill -level sensors, software monitoring platforms, and access control systems. What we expected was that people were more and more interested in fill -level sensors as one of our products would do. But we were very surprised that there's a lot of interest for access control systems. And cheers! to influence the behavior of citizens. Access control is certainly on the rise as we explored in a previous story on Current Insights. These are systems that only allow for authorized people to access the waste bins. Cities can use the technology to properly sort the trash. Access control can also reduce the amount of trash disposed when combined with a pay-as-you-throw system. And in the Netherlands, we have... experience that if you introduce a pay -as -you -throw system you have 50 percent less rest rates and more recyclables so it is a proven concept. Senseneo, a smart waste company based in Slovakia, is another vendor specializing in this space. CEO Martin Basilia joins us now. I would have to say that the bin access management seems to be really raising. It's everyone who's coming, they are really, like, thrilled with the business management we have, we're offering. So this seems to be like a topic, together with the sensors. And from the national point of view, the deposit and schema is the topic, which is very discussed, because we are known as the only one company on the earth who is operating two countries with the DRS. Deposit refund systems are generally organized so that a consumer pays a small tax. tax on a recyclable product, which is then refunded at the time of deposit. They're seen as a highly effective tool in reducing waste and promoting a circular economy, with forms of it currently active in 38 countries, many who are now looking to further enhance Centineo is doing that with its technology. The company provides a software system that collects data from all stakeholders involved in the deposit. refund system. The data is ingested into its software, which then tracks the life cycle of each package. During the process, the system will also optimize the transport routes and logistics. The company has deployed the solution in Slovakia for a DRS system that went live in January 2022. Martin, clearly a lot of opportunities now exist within the circular economy. How have your business strategy? From the strategy point of view, we made a decision a half year ago or maybe more even a year ago that there is a big demand on ERP, big demand on take-back systems, reverse logistics and DRS. Therefore, we have split the company to multiple organizations. One of them is focusing on DRS. This is something that customers are really keen on to understand because it's the biggest impact on the environment on the circular area. economy the DRS deposit in schema some with the take-back systems and other thing is that more and more customers are really focusing on the efficiency even the cities which been saying no for years now coming to us and they say hey we really need your sensor will need to be more efficient so this seems to be from the point point of view of business that finally the IOT in the in the countries we didn't expect it's coming and it's growing Now, this is the first IFAT conference in four years, so as you might imagine, a lot has changed. Well, we see that there are less startups than before. So maybe due to COVID and technology companies have had a hard time, especially startups, is that the established companies are there and, well, they grew very well. Aside from WasteVision and Centineo, established players at IFAT include BigBelly and... And if you look at all these companies at a high level, they're developing complete solutions. People know now that it is not just a sensor or just an access control system. It's even it's it's the platform, the software, which makes difference behind it and that you can make decisions based on data. So what we are talking about access control systems are field level sensors. Actually, our system, we call it now a smart waste hub, and our smart waste hub is a hub where you can attach multiple sensors, and we already developed these multiple sensors. So you can attach an access control system, you can attach a fill level sensors, but we also have now, and we have a demo here on the trade fair, with fill level light, so you can influence behavior and tell people. which container is available with light we also have now the prototype of a sensor which detects if there is waste placed next to a container so and if someone places waste next to a container we can manage that the light is going to burn but unique is that everything everyone is thinking about data it's all about data So that's a look at some of the top innovation underway at the IFAC conference in Munich and it's interesting to look at how some of that is already coming to life in cities worldwide. Be sure to follow along for more updates on the circular economy and how smart city players are benefiting right here on Current Insights.