SSAM: IoT audit to increase efficiency in waste collection

Project fiche

Client

SSAM

Type

Public

Sector

Waste collection

Geography

Kronoberg, Sweden

Description

IoT audit to SSAM, the regional waste collection company of the Swedish province of Kronoberg, that aims to prepare the transition from a static waste collection system to a dynamic or on-demand one.

The project

CLIENT CHALLENGE

SSAM (Southern Smålands Waste and Environmental Services) is the regional waste collection company in the province of Kronoberg, Sweden. Its concessioned collection services cover 5 municipalities (Lessebo, Markaryd, Tingsryd, Växjö and Älmhult) and more than 80,000 containers of separated waste.

SSAM has a plan in place to reduce the amount of waste and food waste by 25% by 2025. To make that vision a reality, the company initiates a study to determine how the use of technology could improve the waste collection service.

At the time of the study, the collection service used 35 owned and subcontracted trucks to carry out predefined collection routes.

In order to assess improved efficiency as a result of a change from a static collection system to a dynamic or on-demand system the following companies form a consortium: SSAM, Vaxjo's public waste collection company; Växjöbostäder: Växjo municipal company, owner of the buildings where the project is deployed; Suez, Private company, current collection service concessionaire; Wexnet, LoRaWAN operator providing network coverage for the monitoring sensors and Wellness TechGroup, IoT company leading the project implementation and exploitation of the results.

SCOPE

As a first step towards implementing intelligent waste collection, the consortium agrees to deploy an IoT solution in the municipality of Växjö. A total of 310 MiniQ filling level sensors are installed: 190 are placed inside the containers for household waste and 120 in the containers for organic waste.

The solution also includes the Wellness TechGroup software platform Quamtra Manager, where the data obtained from these devices will be displayed and exploited.

SOLUTION

  • Deployment:
    From March to early April 2020, deployment of the monitoring devices is carried out. Sensors are delivered and installed inside the selected containers and platform is configured in order to receive information from them.
  • Monitoring and Analysis:
    Once the sensors are deployed and configured, we proceed to a detailed analysis of the data collected, studying the filling behavior of the containers.

RESULTS

  • 40% of the containers are collected with a filling-level of less than 60%.
  • Small containers (149 and 190 liters) are generally collected with a filing-level of less than 60%.
  • Large containers are generally collected with a filling-level of more than 70%.

CONCLUSIONS

The audit carried out with Wellness TechGroup technology has verified that there are significant margins for improvement in the collection of SSAM waste.

The study shows that container use varies dynamically from day to day and depends on location. Furthermore, data analysis indicates that a static collection service does not adequately adapt to these needs.

Monitoring data reveals a pattern in which containers reach high fill levels throughout the morning. This city can consider changing collection time from the morning to the afternoon, when the containers are full and at risk of overflow.

After completing the audit and reviewing the data, SSAM has decided that it will change its static collection system to an on-demand approach, taking into account real-time use and fill level of the containers.