Electronic sensors in trash cans and dumpsters have been around for years. They’re bolted to the inside of a receptacle, and they can alert a municipality or its contract waste hauler when the bin is full and it’s time to pick up the trash and recyclables.
Now Compology, a San Francisco startup, is taking that sensor tech to a new level. Imagine that same simple “Bin is full” sensor — but add a camera and a GPS device. Then connect it to the cloud for anytime/anywhere visual monitoring, on demand.
“We’re connecting containers remotely to the mother ship,” explained Don Gambelin, Compology’s head of business development. “Universities, special districts, municipalities — if a statute requires cities and counties do something, that’s who Compology is contracting with. It could be a government agency that contracts us to keep an eye on a third-party hauler. We serve all masters.”
Intrigued yet? So is the East Bay city of Livermore. And the Alameda County Waste Management Authority, the Alameda County Source Reduction and Recycling Board, the South Bayside Waste Management Authority and the Energy Council. They’re among the public agencies that are either exploring or using Compology’s tech to streamline the monitoring, collection and sorting of trash and recyclables. Some of that exploration involves grant funding through public agencies, too.
The idea is that rather than send fuel-guzzling collection trucks (and their crews) on a collection route to empty bins that may or may not be full, a Compology client can log in remotely to the website and check whether its bins need emptying.
“We’re 100 percent Web-based,” Gambelin said, “and the images render nicely on a desktop, a laptop or a phone. You log in, and what our software does is take data from the hardware. If you can have an image as your source of data that AI is processing, versus just the data, you’ll find that there’s a strong preference and stronger believability [by the user].”
One challenge that’s created a bigger market for Compology is that China, one of the largest recipients of U.S. recyclables, has in the last six to mine months lowered the limit of contamination (food, waste and other organic and inorganic contaminants) it’s allowing. If a shipment of recyclables is barged in from the U.S. and it’s found to be too contaminated, China is refusing the refuse.
“It’s been a shock to the system,” Gambelin said. “The biggest buyer of [U.S.] waste was China. Now, they’ve changed, so it has to be ‘clean-recycled.’ It’s a huge shock to the system.”
Some public-sector agencies see Compology’s tech as a way to move the recycling conundrum upstream – using the camera to make sure, for instance, that trash and recyclables ares dumped in the appropriate bins, precluding the contamination problem.
“When somebody’s watching you, you behave better,” Gambelin noted.
“There are fairly strong laws in California that are continuing to obligate municipalities to take action to monitor oversight,” he said. “What does that oversight look like? Is government going to take that role directly, or are they going to have a contractor provide it? That’s where tech companies like ours come in.”
Each Compology camera measures about 5 inches by 7 inches by 2 inches. It comes with built-in GPS, and it’s housed in rugged plastic that’s bolted to the inside of the receptacle. The cost is about $200 per camera, plus $15 a month for the service.
Other potential applications include clothing donation bins and inside the trailer of a load-hauling semi-truck.
Gambelin said that because the technology is still fairly new, the company is open to working with other firms that may see ways to collaborate with other technologies.
