Author: nadav

Local and federal governments have taken notice that the waste collection industry is in desperate need of new and improved waste technologies. While many companies with emerging solutions continue to seek funding from private investors, government funding could provide the budgets that would enact sizable change in the industry. Funding will be essential, yet the allocation of funding to the correct solutions will be paramount in continuing the increase of government funding for new waste technologies.

One example of government funding geared toward boosting new waste management technology can be found in South Africa, where the Department of Environmental Affairs has created the Green Fund.  This fund has been founded to finance new, green technologies that will contribute to a low-carbon, resource efficient and climate resilient growth path. The Green Fund comes with a budget of 800 million Rand, and one of its focus areas will be sustainable waste management and recycling.

Another example of government funds being allocated to new waste management technologies can be found in Australia, where the Victorian Government has established a $2 million program to support innovative waste and energy technologies. This program will primarily focus on waste-to-energy technologies that aim to steer waste away from landfills.  The government expects to find more ecologically friendly ways to dispose of their 300,000 tons of annual food waste.  

According to Forbes, the waste management industry is due to receive $42 billion in funding through the year 2023. This funding should improve the processes of waste collection, processing, energy recovery, and disposal.  Some of the funding for the waste collection industry will be allocated to companies who are creating a smart residential and commercial waste collection routes by placing sensors on garbage bins that signal the best pick up times.

While waste collection processes could undoubtedly be improved some skeptics fail to see how placing sensors on every single garbage bin will cut down on the lost energy that haunts the waste industry.  Other companies such as GreenQ take a different approach by placing data harvesting devices on garbage trucks instead of sensors on cans.  These systems will also optimize waste collection routes, yet the solution will cost much less, as there are far fewer garbage trucks than bins. Smart Truck solutions may be the cure to the trauma caused by the failure of bin sensors to this point.

As government funding for new waste management technologies continues to increase it will be important for local and state governments to allocate their funds appropriately. While some solutions may appear to have energy-saving benefits, the operation and implementation of specific solutions may consume more energy than they save. Nevertheless, the rise in government funding will be instrumental in causing significant improvements in the waste collection industry.

The obvious suspects as far as target markets go for Israeli startups is either the u.s market, for the ease of doing business and lack of language barrier, or the relatively close by European market. No company is disregarding the Asian markets, but their distance from the entrepreneur’s comfort zone is delaying the interaction to an unknown time.

The combination of curiosity and some positive interactions at conferences joined together to an invitation to participate at Bixpo 2017, which took place at Gwangju, South Korea. BIXPO 2017 serves various needs required by the fast-changing world of smart cities and electric power industry through its New Technology Exhibition, International Conference, and International Invention Fair.

Preparations for the trip were made by the knowledge that Israel and South Korea are now negotiating a free trade agreement when this door opens we want to amongst the first walking through it.   The trusted google maps were having troubles providing consistent information, such as our beloved hotel booking platform. And guess what we learned?  Most of the Koreans don’t speak English.

But, since we got help from the expo’s organizer and Yudi, from GT Korea Israel, we could complete the preparations.

We landed in a beautiful and clean country with fantastic views. Korea is a mid-size country and relevant as a market. Arriving at exhibition grounds, we find our pavilion ready to go, and all we needed to do is place our brochures and plug in our DOK, fun fun fun! High profile visitors characterized the expo itself, so the dynamics were as a big B2B seminar, which was terrific!

Also,  You couldn’t look away from the the colors and the movement, the local hospitality and kindness of people.In our short visit, we had the chance to have dinner with the mayor of Gwangsu and even took a selfie with a local Italian tv star

Another point worth mentioning is the western start-up’s brotherhood that was formed there, a great chance to meet the people behind the companies that are making things move faster around the world. But, it is important to remember, we a are commercial company, and this trip was a business one, so the bottom line could only be written some months later.

To conclude – the future certainly looks bright in South Korea

Collecting and analyzing data is essential for the growth and optimization of any business. According to Forbes connecting different objects to the Internet of Things (IoT) is revolutionizing the way whole industries and cities are operating. Waste management stands out as a large global industry that desperately needs a transition to IoT-based technology.  This transition should drastically improve the waste collection process by making it a data-driven process.

Today’s waste collection solutions begin with garbage trucks that follow set routes and schedules to pick up waste from homes and businesses. This process could be vastly improved, as these routes and pickup times are often not based on data. It’s easy to infer that many of the garbage cans on a particular route aren’t full and could potentially be picked up a day or two later.  One could also imagine a similar scenario where a can would fill up before its scheduled pickup time, leaving home and business owners stuck with nowhere to put their excess waste.

The waste collection industry’s first attempt at improving its standard process came in the form of smart garbage bins, or bins with sensors on them to report weight and fullness. The folks at Wired.com even published an article that discussed how smart bins would revolutionize the way garbage is collected throughout American cities.  What they didn’t foresee; however, was that smart bins would do more harm than good by driving up costs instead of reducing them.

Imagine a city has 100,000 garbage bins.  This means 100,000 sensors that need a power source, potential maintenance and a method for communicating with a central database.  All of these factors made smart bins a poor choice for cities looking to make their waste collection process more efficient to save money. As a result, many haulers and municipalities grew weary of making waste management a data-driven process, leading to other potential solutions.

Next came companies such as GreenQ, that feature a technology that’s built on truck-based monitoring.  This form of monitoring presents a far better solution, as haulers and municipalities don’t have to put a sensor on every garbage bin, but only need to outfit their trucks with sensors.  These smart garbage trucks could then replace the bins as the objects that would bring IoT technology to the waste collection industry.

As IoT technology continues to develop and break into the waste management industry, some haulers will begin incorporating monitoring technology before others.  These haulers will have a strong selling point for their potential clients, as they’ll be able to provide a more efficient service.  Haulers will be able to use their collected data to plan optimal pickup times and routes due to the bins’ fullness. Their clients could then rest assured knowing that they’re not overpaying for a service that may be picking up empty cans or allowing the cans to overflow. Also, these haulers would be saving money from reduced man hours and fuel costs, so they could potentially offer rates lower than their competitors.

The transition of the waste management industry to a data-driven industry will only make the waste collection process more efficient. This efficiency brings a double benefit as garbage collectors (haulers and municipalities), and clients could save money by introducing IoT technology to an industry in desperate need of a revamp.

Streamlining waste management with an Internet of Things platform powered by IBM Bluemix OpenWhisk technology
GreenQ brings Internet of Things (IoT) technology to municipal waste management, launching its real-time monitoring and analytics platform in an IBM® Bluemix® environment and adopting serverless IBM Bluemix OpenWhisk architecture.

Read the full case study here

Today it seems that every nearly every industry is seeing revolutionary innovation that promises to change the way we do things. From self-driving cars to 3D printed organs, technology is redefining how we complete everyday tasks.

However, waste collection is one area of society that has seen little innovation in the last few decades. The process involves a garbage truck coming to a neighborhood, usually once a week, collecting waste from each bin, and depositing the waste at a landfill. This process does not take into consideration the waste collection needs of individual, communities or neighborhoods.

As a result, waste collection routes are inefficient with pick ups happening too often or too infrequently leading to garbage trucks being on the road too often. The consequence of this is more carbon emissions from fuel inefficient garbage trucks and increased congestion on public roads.

The United States produces over 250 million tons of solid waste every year with that number expected to climb as the population increases. Now more than ever there is a need for a smart waste management solution.

While recycling should be a part of any waste management solution, there is only so much that can be reused or recycled. Conventional garbage will always exist. Nonetheless, Even if we generate more recycling solutions, increase education and enforce separation at source, we will still be needing to collect recyclables in an efficient and cost effective way.

The Solution

GreenQ’s solution to the problem is truck based smart waste management technology focused on collecting and monitoring of data. GreenQ installs sensors on garbage trucks which allows the user to monitor residential waste collection and gives them data on every individual waste bin, when it was last collected, and how full it was at the time of collection.

Those responsible for waste collection now have all of this data at the tip of their fingers and can even see it overlayed on a city map in real time. With this kind of data and GreenQ’s recommendation for optimization, new, more efficient trash pickup routes can be developed that will decrease the amount of overflowing bins, reduce the number of half empty bins being picked up, and lower costs and emissions by keeping garbage trucks off the road.

So the next time you throw your waste to the recycling bin,  ask your self if the collection is efficient enough.

With an inexorable growth of global population and consumption needs, the world of waste disposal is an immediate, growing concern. That is why, in recent decades, an increased incentive in better infrastructure for waste disposal sites, as well as better waste management in pickup and disposal, is leading better technology like IoT systems in waste management to pave the way for more efficient solutions.

1. The future is IoT of Everything
As each year passes, it seems like a decade of new and innovative technology is on our doorstep to make life easier and more convenient. IoT waste software is no different, but the reality is waste management pickup, and disposal is still outdated compared to similar systems making that make our life easier. However, the necessity of IoT devices and AI to ease our daily lives but also to improve efficiency. IoT software in waste management includes developing systems to improve routes for pickup, measurement of an exact total waste collection in weight and volume, as well as the future of separation of various materials for reusing and recycling.
2. Cost Efficiency for City Municipalities
So why is efficiency so important for a smarter waste management systems? The easy answer is cost and expenses. Private companies, city municipalities, as well as the average citizen would not mainly look at convenience, but rather the bottom line as a dominant deciding factor to implement smarter systems for waste management and disposal. IoT sensors thus provide a win-win solution for improved optimization to reduce costs in labor, time, and fuel costs by rerouting trucks and letting the end user view in real-time how data is tracked, collected, and stored for analysis.
3. Wasteful
It may be hard to swallow, but the world population is currently growing at about 1.11% a year – or in numbers, that’s about 80 million people. With a global population heading to inexplicable numbers, it is also hard to grasp the direct correlation of our higher consumption needs, which directly leads to a higher generation of waste. Smarter waste management, including IoT systems, utilizes technology to take the concern out of our waste disposal by first generating data on how much waste we produce and collect initially, and then using this data and implementing more efficient ways to reduce waste in the future via separation and recycling.

4. Software to Reduce Green House Gas (GHG) Emissions
Also, waste is not a thing that simply disappears from our planet the moment it is taken from our curbside, waste and the materials comprising it use vital and unrenewable land resources that question the unfortunate rule of “out-of-sight-out-of-mind,” or NIMBY (not in my backyard) syndrome. This syndrome, or contagious reality, leads to neglection, and/or over the emission of GHGs, and poorly handled waste disposal whether we like it or not. That is why software, developed with waste management in mind, is crucial in preventing GHGs, as well as contamination and leakage of potable groundwater.

5. Cleaner City, Happier Citizen
Smart city waste collection is not only a dream for those collecting the waste, but also for the residents living with the waste who hope to be rid of their smelly, dirty garbage as soon as possible. The prospective future is full of opportunities to create a greener and smarter city, leading to a cleaner planet. The 3 R’s, or Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, does not have to be an idealistic mantra for policy makers concerning waste because the solution is available even today with IoT technology, and it’s only getting better.

Smart cities are becoming more relevant and applicable as the years go by, many universities and colleges around the world are addressing the topic via classes, conferences, and academic meet-ups.
Even though those educational institutions possess the knowledge and distinguished professors, many of them realize the importance of integration with the business sector and involving leading entrepreneurs in their daily activities.

GreenQ is considered to be a leader in the Israeli smart cities eco-system, with its smart waste management vision and technology. While we install more systems on garbage trucks, the academy is showing more interest in hearing what we have to say.

During the last months, we became an academy rockstars! Almost every week, our CEO and Strategic account manager are presenting our Internet of Garbage vision to eager students in academic institutions in Israel:
So far we have pitched at the following establishments:

– IDC Herzliya
– Shenkar College of Engineering and Design
– Bar Ilan University
– Sami Shamoon College of Engineering
– Tel Aviv University
– Tech high-school near Jerusalem

We are thrilled about this relationship and will work hard to maintain and enlarge it.