How Reykjavik Optimizes Litter Bin Waste Collection, Location

countries around the world are pledging a net zero environment as strategies are laid out a key vertical to achieve this is waste since it is one of the pillars of the net zero description so waste is more and more becoming a focus for legislators who are looking for waste optimizations smart solutions. Iceland has really set a goal to be CO2 neutral by the 2040. So every investment that the government wants to move on is to move into that goal. Reykjavik City actually has even more goal. They want to be carbon neutral by 2030. The smart city and wireless monitoring is a really process to do so in the eu for example the european commission has put forward a proposal that would require all member states to implement deposit and return systems by 2029 only countries that can prove that 90 of plastic single -use bottles are recycled will be exempt from this new law there are also pay -as -you -throw systems which as we already saw in a previous video impose a fee on residence depending on how much household non -recycled waste they throw out we've also seen the well -known waste collection optimization use case using ultrasonic radar or laser sensors to measure the level of waste of a container but while such solutions have historically focused on large voluntary waste drop -offs we start to see more and more sensor implementation in smaller public litter bins which is exactly what happened in Reykjavík. People used to just go and empty bins by routine. These days they would go and take this route, the next day they would go and take the other so they would walk into every single bin in the city, whether they're full or not. Most of the time they're half empty and some other bins are always full. And I thought it was a waste of resources. To improve operations, for almost a year the Icelandic capital has been testing out 250 fill levels since. in an area covering university, downtown and outdoor areas. They are using ultrasonic sensors by Sensoneo. The sensor is installed on the top of the bin and four times a day, or however often the city chooses, it collects data on how full the bin is and sends it to a platform. The platform displays the bins, creates a fullness average and can even find the best routes to collect them, although Reykjavik isn't testing that yet. We're hoping to maybe put one team, especially in this specific area, that's only supposed to manage the bins and they will only go every day and do the bins that are red. Right now it's several teams and whoever is closest to Tennessee, it's a red one, they go and just take it out. So maybe we are going to implement the routes management that's inside Sentinel. They also want to expand the project to other areas of the city as they have between... 2 000 and 3 000 public bins in total in reykjavik what makes this project different from other fuel level sensor initiatives though is that some 200 of these sensors are in small 40 litre bins well most of the bins are small bins that are hanged up on uh light holes little green ones that we thought wouldn't work the sensors are not supposed to work for that but they actually work very well there um these little small bins and that's the bottom that falls out there's no bags in the morning the detail of the bag is important as one of the problems with ultrasonic sensors is bags when there's wind and the bag isn't very full it can fold inside giving a false positive a full bin the capital has encountered some problems with that in the 110 litre bins they're monitoring the goal of the project was to test the solution to see if they could save resources, but also correct a city planning mistake. There was an era here about 10 years ago where the politicians, everybody that thought that, okay, we have to do better in our waste management and the solution was to put bins all over the place. We have bins every 10 or 20 meters almost here in Reykjavik and wherever you stand, you'll see it's got several bins. And then the time goes by and then you find out, okay, this is not okay, this is not okay. was maybe not the correct answer. It's more maybe putting the bins on the right spot. This type of initiative not only saves time, but can also help city managers on their path to a net-zero municipality, as a more efficient collection method helps reduce emissions. For connectivity, the capital went with cellular. It already had a contract with a company, so SIM cards were the best option. There are private companies that I have, some lower... antennas here in LK, but that was that's technology that has been used much here in Iceland, we don't have the experience of that. The SIM cards are a well -known strategy here in Iceland and have been good and we decided to use that at least now. In the waste industry the SIGVOX is getting very small LoRaWAN is still very popular in case that the client or the city or the waste collector or somebody the the factory or somebody have their own LoRa but in the municipality business if they don't if they just want the solution and they don't have any idea about the networks which is in most of the cases the the NBIOT and CATM which is yeah based on LTE it's that those are the most popular ones when it comes to download town public litter bins management smart compactors are the most known solution to reduce the volume of waste when asked about why not go for this solution instead of fill level sensors carl said they're expensive and we think that instead of investing in a lot of those that we might mess rather into smart solutions like build sensors that we're always changing you know right now this street is only you know we have several different types of bins um that are probably coming in in the downtown area and some places in the parks and stuff like that and so you know we would like to just be able to take out the sensor and put it into a new bin at the moment the city is doing dynamic collection which is when the data is used to know which bin is for and go empty it but also gathering historical data to understand the collection process and infrastructure it is an example of how field level sensors of growing in demand partly because of city goals and partly because the price of the solution has drastically changed in some cases being half the price of what it was a few years ago we'll keep you up to date with other smart city initiatives in the Icelandic capital because you know if it's smart cities it's on current