A $263,000 grant from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District was awarded to the Alameda County Waste Management Authority (StopWaste) to innovate its waste collection and hauling operations.

Due to the explosive growth in the region, the Livermore area has seen a spike in illegal dumping, and Livermore Sanitation was dedicated to finding a practical solution to easily identify and reduce contamination.

To do so, Livermore Sanitation, Inc. partnered with Compology to deploy an automated, camera-based dumpster monitoring technology to reduce contamination in commercial business compost streams. Another goal was to increase diversion of organics from landfills. The aim was to provide consistent, highly-targeted education to business teams to improve disposal habits and reduce stream contamination.

StopWaste believed using Compology makes waste management more affordable and allows for real-time education and behavior change — and their theories were proven correct. Compology allows them to view organic bins daily to check contents, and automatically identify and measure contamination levels while assessing dumpster fullness throughout each dumpster’s fill cycle. This helps them audit (or “lid flip”) commercial dumpsters daily from a remote location, instead of driving to each business and doing it manually.

To date, Livermore has seen a 20% reduction in personnel-hours spent on lid-flipping since implementing Compology, translating to a 20% cost reduction.

They’ve also seen an 80% reduction in contamination across primarily organics bins belonging to restaurants and retail plazas.

Additionally, Livermore Sanitation is also leveraging automated rightsizing, identifying their precise needs at every location. This means dollars saved for businesses and the city through decreasing the size of their garbage bins (which can be more expensive per yard) where it makes sense, more accurate levels of organic recycling services, and fair rates for customers. Essentially, they’re matching their service levels to the actual output of waste, recycling and organics material.

“By changing the sizes of the dumpsters and decreasing the garbage in organics containers, we’re increasing our overall recycling. We’re actually getting more yardage of services for a lesser cost,” says Chris Jackson, Customer Service & Outreach Supervisor of Livermore Sanitation.

On Compology’s end, there’s excitement of working with forward-thinking industry leaders to better waste management practices and help the environment. This confirms the feasibility of using remote dumpster camera monitoring and artificial intelligence contamination recognition technology to successfully monitor waste, improve disposal habits, and reduce contamination at the source.