Smart solar garbage, where have you bin?

Hands up if you know which of these three vehicles – transit buses, commercial trucks or garbage collectors – are the most polluting vehicles on our roads?

Transit buses and commercial trucks win hands down, just by the sheer weight of numbers. But for wastage on a per unit basis, by far the most inefficient, heavily polluting and expensive vehicle is the rubbish truck. Its size and the stop-start nature of its business means it consumes a litre for around every 1.2 kilometres travelled.

According to James Poss, the founder and chief technology officer of US company called BigBelly Solar, rubbish trucks in developing countries consume some 15 billion litres of fuel a year, and spend more than $150 billion on operating costs, or up to $300,000 per vehicle per year. It dawned on him about a decade ago that this presented a significant business opportunity.

Now he is rolling out a “smart grid” of solar-powered trash cans. Targeting the municipal and university market, BigBelly seeks to replace bins placed in community areas, parks, and campuses and a new unit that uses solar energy to drive an internal compactor, and sensors to tell the network operators when the bin needs to be emptied.

According to Poss, in cities such as Philadelphia, where there are now 1000 of its waste stations, it has reduced the number of trips nearly six-fold, and delivered an 80 per cent savings on fuel costs, emissions and pollution, while delivering a payback within two to three years. The company now has 12,500 stations in about 30 countries: many are in the pilot stage, but in Philadelphia, Chicago, Austin and Los Angeles, there has been a city-wide deployment.

“It is an economic problem and an environmental problem,” Poss told Climate Spectator in an interview at the start of a trip to Australia to meet government, municipalities, sustainable energy groups and university administrators. “We take a unique approach to do this. We eliminate the need for the truck to make the trip in the first place.”

BigBelly's solar technology does not rely on direct sunlight, and draws its power from ambient light. It gets enough, even in Chicago, to power the 40-second compacting mechanism once a day. “It decides when it wants to do it.”

The sensors indicate to a management systems back at base when the waste station is full. That means less trips are needed, and when they are, they can be plotted and planned to make them quicker and more efficient.

Poss says BigBelly's offering is proving attractive to city managers required to deliver a service at least cost. And it is now also working with waste firms looking to get a cost advantage over their competitors. But perhaps the most fascinating part of the business is how a little lateral thinking can draw on different technologies and provide an effective solution.

“We don't consider ourselves to be a solar company, and we are not a vehicle company. It's a solar solution, but it's not solar technology. It's not a fuel efficiency technology, but it saves fuel. We like to think of ourselves as a smart grid for waste and recycling.”

And therein lies the challenge to other long-standing industries and technologies.

“Sometimes solutions do not come from within the industry they operate in, “ he notes, and sometimes that's because the industry has no interest to do so. Take the energy industry as an example, Poss points to the emergence of the “real” smart grid, and the major players in that business, the likes of IBM, Cisco and Intel.

“They use technology to reduce waste and the mismatch between supply and demand. I don't think the coal industry, a decade ago, would have seen its major competition coming from these three companies, yet they are emerging as their biggest competitors. I hope they (Cisco, IBM and Intel) really challenge them.”