Dumpster monitoring technology chosen to reduce organics contamination

ALAMEDA COUNTY, Calif. – The Alameda County Waste Management Authority (StopWaste.org) has been awarded a $263,000 grant by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to work with Livermore Sanitation, Inc. (LSI) and use Compology’s automated, camera-based dumpster monitoring technology to reduce contamination in commercial business compost streams and increase diversion of organics from landfills. Diversion Strategies will oversee the tracking and reporting of progress.

In order to meet StopWaste’s mandatory organics diversion, LSI has traditionally sent people to commercial dumpster locations to “lid flip” or audit for contamination. LSI brought on Compology as their dumpster monitoring technology of choice due to its unique ability to remotely capture in-dumpster images, automatically identify and measure contamination and assess dumpster fullness throughout the entire fill cycle of a dumpster.

“Collecting food scraps in commercial organics bin is important for Alameda County to meet its waste reduction goals and make a positive impact on the environment,” said Wendy Sommer, executive director, StopWaste.Org. “Keeping it clean – including no plastic, metal or glass in the bins – is essential to this effort. We look forward to working with our partners and businesses on this innovative project to reduce contamination and promote healthy compost.”

Compology’s cameras automatically identify and measure contamination to provide standardized scoring, alerts, and reports to reduce contamination at the source.

StopWaste believes implementing the monitoring system will provide a path to affordably monitor, and educate generators in real-time; LSI intends to use Compology to provide consistent, highly-targeted education to generators to improve disposal habits and to reduce stream contamination for improved diversion from landfills; and The Bay Area Air Quality Management District aims to reduce the amount of organics in landfills, and as a result, reduce the level of methane emissions.

“Compology’s bin content monitoring system paired with the comprehensive outreach and education efforts by StopWaste and LSI have the ability to change the dialogue on contamination with the generator by having documented images of bin contamination” said Rachel Oster, principal, Diversion Strategies.

Compology and Diversion Strategies will provide reporting and analysis support to LSI to verify the feasibility of using remote monitoring to reduce contamination by commercial businesses.