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Tom Johansen started the company Bintel/iTunnan working on innovations for the waste industry. His idea was to streamline garbage disposal by using small sensors on different garbage bins.

“We believe that the new smart city networks will open up more compact, agile and cheaper solutions that will allow us to put the systems in place today,” Tom Johansen said at the beginning of the project. We believe that the new technology will open up wider use of digital connectivity in the waste industry.

Tom Johansen looked at three different challenges and worked on projects both in Lund and Helsingborg. Part of this was that in the SOM project in Lund, Lund, they tracked and positioned containers and created a simple system to keep track of them with the help of sensors. There are about 2,000 containers and it is a great advantage if the cleaning company knows exactly where everyone is. The second part was also carried out in Lund and dealt with making level measurements in garbage bins. Lund Purification Plant and Bintel did trials with sensors in the underground containers, partly because these containers are expensive to empty and there is money to be made from a more optimized emptying frequency. The third part was performed in Helsingborg and this part was funded as a Interreg project . Although funding came from different directions, the results are working together for the solutions of the future. In this part, Bintel looked at and North West Skånes Cleaning Services AB (NSR) of about 250 villa households with multi-compartment vessels. Previously, the vessels were emptied at fixed intervals and on a fixed schedule.

“In four-compartment vessels, demand-controlled emptying has not been possible before,” Tom Johansen said. You want to be able to empty when the vessels are full and not half full.

The solution to this was not a level meter, but simply a sensor that allows the customer to mark when it is time for emptying. The sensor sent a signal to the cleaning plant that could arrive with a garbage truck, for example, within 24 hours.

“This opens up exciting things,” said Tom Johansen. If we assume that you do not have a static tariff, but pay for each time you request an emptying, this can affect the sorting of garbage. We would like to see how it controls the way people shop and whether they will choose goods according to packaging. There are many environmental aspects that are interesting to evaluate in this project — emptying frequency, amount of garbage, number of garbage trucks, customer satisfaction and working environment.

Lund University evaluated the project and it showed a number of interesting effects. The most notable effect was that emptying was reduced by a whopping 40 per cent when customers were given the choice themselves. As a result, the wear and tear on garbage trucks was also reduced. At the same time, there were also fewer deviations in the form of, for example, overcrowded bins and garbage bins that were not in the right place.

In connection with the analysis of the project, a number of interviews with customers were also conducted. Customer responses showed that they were satisfied, both with the demand-adapted emptying and the ease of use of the technology. They also experienced an increased interest in waste management.

Customers had requests for new compartment seating, which could extend the emptying frequency even further. During the project, the need for emptying was based on the size of the vessels, with fractions such as cardboard, plastic and organic food waste being perceived to be the governing parameters.

The university also conducted interviews with Northwestern Skånes Renholdnings AB (NSR), which is the company responsible for emptying the vessels in Helsingborg. Employees testified that the rounds had become more effective than before.

It was hoped that the demand-driven emptying test would lead customers to plan their purchases differently so that less packaging was carried home, but this effect has not yet been analysed in the project.

The waste tariff did not change during the test, that is, the tariff remained unchanged regardless of how many empties a household ordered. During the customer interviews, it was revealed that there is a desire for increased incentives for customers to reduce the number of emptying. Some rewards could be lower tariff on fewer empties or competitions with wins on waste reduction.

“We have addressed one of the most expensive waste applications, and can demonstrate efficiency there. With this, it can be stated that all waste collection in the future is likely to be needs-driven, not scheduled,” said Tom Johansen.

Here's how it went: The customer's four-compartment vessel was equipped with a slider. In the slider there is a radio transmitter that can send a signal. When the slider is moved, a signal is sent indicating that the vessel needs to be emptied. The signal goes through a LoRa network and is then sent into a route planning program for the garbage trucks.

The emptying then took place from the same day or at the latest two days later.

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What was the result?

The project with a slider on the four-compartment vessels led to satisfied customers, reduced emptying by as much as 40 percent, less wear on garbage trucks, fewer deviations with overcrowded bins and improved efficiency in the cleaning plant's rounds.

The experiment with keeping track of municipal containers showed that GPS drew too much battery to be an effective solution. Instead, Bintel started positioning the municipality's containers by scanning the container's sensor with a mobile phone along with a position. The mobile phone can also register if the container is replaced.

The experiments with level measurement in garbage containers were seen as particularly beneficial where a reading is difficult to do manually, as in underground containers where, in addition, emptying is expensive to do and there is much to save on avoiding doing so unnecessarily. The solution can also be used as a level gauge on so-called fat platters in cafes and pizzerias.

How is the project taken forward?

Among other things, Bintel works with the Swedish Energy Agency to optimise the emptying of recycling stations using the company's sensors.

The experiment with connected garbage cans in Helsingborg was scaled up so that a total of 5400 garbage containers in the area were connected for further testing starting in February 2020.

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Facts sub-project Smart waste management

The project is a sub-project of the SOM project is part of the Strategic Innovation Programme for the Internet of Things, IoT Sweden, which is funded by Vinnova. Anders Trana at Future by Lund was the project manager for the entire project. The project started on 1 September 2017 and ran until December 2020.

‍Project Time: 2017-09-01 - 2019-04-30

Sub-project manager: Tom Johansen, Bintel

Partnerschappen: Bintel, Sensefarm, NSR, Cleaning Agency Lund

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