Jan 09, 2013When Avfall Sør Husholdning AS (Southern Household Waste Co.), a Norwegian trash-management firm, bills the 45,000 households it serves in the city of Kristiansand, the company utilizes RFID-based data to track the quantity and type of refuse collected. Avfall Sør Husholdning is one of hundreds of organizations currently using technology supplied by AMCS Group, an Ireland-based provider of software and solutions for recycling and waste-management businesses.
AMCS has been offering RFID technology since 2003, to help municipalities and private waste-management firms in Europe and North America manage their pickup routes, as well as enable accurate billing and reject services onsite for unpaid accounts. The system employs 125 kHz low-frequency (LF) RFID tags provided by HID Global, attached to or built into bins, and AMCS' RFID readers mounted on trucks' hydraulic lifters. At some sites within the United States, AMCS provides ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) tags supplied by other vendors.
AMCS has customers of its RFID solution around the globe, with between 9 and 10 million household waste bins tagged, says Jimmy Martin, AMCS Group's CEO. The most recent functionality being offered with the RFID system enables drivers of trash-collection trucks to determine if a customer has not paid his or her bills, and to then send a text message to that individual, and automatically reject a bin being lifted at that location until the bill is paid. What's more, Martin adds, the company is providing a function to help a waste-management firm know when a trash-loaded bin is heavier than expected, in order to determine if contamination has occurred—such as non-recyclable goods being placed within the recycling container.
Generally, users first retrofit each of their bins with either a 125 kHz Bin tag, which can be screwed to the lip of a container's top, or a 125 kHz Plug tag, a custom-designed push-in tag for steel containers—both supplied by HID Global. In some cases, bin providers attach the tags at the manufacturing site. The tags, which can be read at a distance of up to several inches from the reader, have a life span of more than eight years, exceeding that of the typical bin, says Richard Aufreiter, HID Global's director of product marketing for identification technologies. Each tag is encoded with a unique ID number.
Trucks are equipped with AMCS' readers, installed on the hydraulic lifters that raise the bin to the hopper to dump the trash contained within. AMCS also supplies a solution whereby operators can weigh each cart as it is lifted, and capture the weight-based and RFID data via a wired connection, thereby validating every lift. The readers forward the ID number and weight to the back-end software via a cellular connection, to be viewed at the company's office, while GPS devices located on the trucks simultaneously transmit GPS coordinates to confirm the time and location at which each cart was lifted.
Initially, the system was designed to track bins being emptied, and to provide business analytics for users regarding which customers' bins were emptied, as well as the number of pickups each truck carried out. This information can be used to optimize truck routes, Martin explains, as well as provide even workloads. This function alone, he notes, typically enables users to reduce their truck fleet by 10 to 20 percent.
During the past two years or so, AMCS has also been offering an extension to the automatic paperless billing option that employs RFID data to determine, in real time, if the account for a particular bin being lifted to the hopper has been properly paid. Before a customer's trash is picked up, the software sends a text message to the number listed on each account in which payments are overdue. This message is typically sent on the morning before that pickup is scheduled. The user can then log into his or her account and make a payment. If the customer fails to do so, the system is designed to reject a pickup.
First, the hydraulic lifter raises the bin, after which the reader captures its tag ID number and forwards that information to the software on the user's server, as well as on the truck's own onboard computer, which determines whether the account is paid. If a bill is overdue, a trigger is sent to the vehicle's lifting system to stop the lifter, which instead returns the bin to the sidewalk. According to Aufreiter, the tag must be read and a response must be sent to the lifting system before it will accelerate its speed in order to raise the bin all the way over the hopper. Thus, a fast and accurate tag read is critical.
The AMCS software then sends a message to the customer, indicating that a pickup was rejected due to an overdue account. Once the customer pays the bill, he or she can then schedule another pickup.
A truck's onboard computer provides real-time communication between the driver and the office. The system displays data explaining to the operator why a bin is being rejected, or provides the opportunity for that worker to report to the company's managers why a cart has not yet been lifted. It can also alert the operator, as well as stop the lifter, in the event that a tag is not read, or if the bin seems to be located at the wrong address.
Avfall Sør utilizes AMCS-based data not only to track each vehicle's efficiency, but also to receive alerts if a problem occurs involving a bin. For example, if a bin appears to be damaged, drivers input that observation into the AMCS system while the bin's contents are being dumped. The company also uses the RFID-based data to determine billing for each customer, based on the number of times his or her bins were emptied.
Since opening its business in 2003, Martin says, AMCS "really started looking at the benefits of using RFID technology when tracking waste consumption," which first led to a one-year pilot. Since then, the technology has been widely deployed by AMCS across Ireland, United Kingdom, Scandinavia, France and the United States. For its U.S. customers, Martin adds, "the big drive is around encouraging recycling and rewarding individuals" who recycle regularly. In this case, each bin's pickup weight is stored in the software, helping the company to determine the extent to which residents at each address are recycling, as opposed to discarding other types of refuse in the bin.
This year, some of AMCS' customers are now using the supplied data to determine which customers may be placing the wrong type of rubbish into the bins, based on each bin's weight at pickup time. Weights inconsistent with the company's expectations are stored and flagged in the software, and operators can be warned to visually check the contents as the bins are being dumped.
Although most European customers are using LF tags, AMCS provides UHF solutions in the United States. That, Martin says, is because waste-management vehicles and bins in this country are less standardized—and, in some cases, there may be a longer distance between the tag and a reader on the lifter, which can vary from one municipality or company to another. However, he adds, UHF technology does not transmit as reliably as LF tags in the presence of metal.
