People living in Leduc will soon have artificial intelligence’s help with sorting their waste.
The city just south of Edmonton announced Thursday that it will add AI technology to a collection truck that will scan green carts as they’re dumped into the truck.
If the system detects something that shouldn’t be included with the organics in the cart — for example, a plastic bag — a photo is taken of the item and associated with a specific household using GPS data in the chip in the bin, the city said.
Then, a postcard with the image will be sent to the house with information about what can, and cannot, go in the green cart. Everything except for the detected contaminant will be blurred out to protect privacy, according to the city.
An employee will review each image to ensure accuracy and consistency before a postcard is sent, the city said.
City staff said the program is meant to teach, not shame.
“We’re hoping that it educates residents of what to properly put in their organics cart,” said Michael Hancharyk, environmental manager for the City of Leduc.
“Most of our residents are doing a great job sorting waste correctly,” said Coun. Glen Finstad. “We can now focus on helping certain households by giving them customized information that suits their needs.”
The AI technology will roll out June 26 and be used until the end of the year.
When there is any contamination in a household’s cart of organics, the entire truck it gets dumped into has to go to the landfill instead of being diverted, the city said.
“If we find at the Leduc landfill there’s too much contamination, it could get rejected, then all that material despite everyone’s efforts could just end up at the landfill, and then we’ve missed that opportunity of that amount of organics going to be processed,” he said.
Hancharyk added the city’s contamination rate is around 20 per cent but the goal is 10 per cent.
The city said this will help with streamlining services as carts will be inspected during each collection instead of periodically.
The project is supported by Telus as an add-on service as part of the PureFibre network build that was completed in the fall, the city said, while Prairie Robotics is supporting the AI and personalized education components of the program.
City of Edmonton staff will be watching the Leduc pilot to see if it could work in the capital city, according to Denis Jubinville, branch manager of waste services for the city of Edmonton
“We are doing a bunch of waste characterization studies across the city of Edmonton across four seasons to determine what we have within our waste and with that data we’ll be in a better position to help do some of those assessments,” said Jubinville.
He added that Edmonton’s waste is preprocessed and the contaminants are taken out before it gets to a processing facility, but the smaller communities in the region don’t have that option.
The ultimate goal is to get organics out of the regular black garbage bin, he said.
“If organics are in the black cart, there’s really no chance of making it into a recycled product.”
Leduc residents can use the city’s tool or the Recycle Coach app to find out what waste goes in each cart. The City of Edmonton also has a website and the WasteWise app for residents to download.