Our Product Stewardship Tracking App wins national digitalisation award

To do this, REMONDIS IMS’s in-house technology and digital development team conceived, designed and built an App from scratch that:

• Integrated with REMONDIS IMS’ existing waste tracking system
• Allowed our company and subcontracted drivers to use an iOS or Android smart phone or tablet to run the app
• Used the smart phone camera to scan a unique QR code on each bin we collect
• Tracked the bin ONTO the collection truck and then OFF at the processing site
• Allowed the processing site to sort the contents of each bin, enter the weight of each category of material collected and take photos of the non-paint materials collected
• Connected all the data collected back to a bin collected from a customer site on a particular day

Our team was confident we could deliver, and within a few months of securing the contract, the App was operational. We then worked with the drivers, processing sites and our customer Paintback to tweak its performance, and it is now integral to our contract delivery, with new ideas coming from within our operations team and from our customer that we can incorporate.

Transparency is a powerful tool for enabling behaviour change and logistical efficiency, and clever digitisation – importantly, delivered in an intuitive app deployed at the collection point on conventional smart phones, with no barrier to take-up by users – is the pathway to transparency.

The Product Stewardship Tracking App has made the following information transparent:

• The weight of contaminated material per collection, by location
• The nature of contaminants
• The source of contaminants

…and in so doing has made it possible to change behaviour at the source, which in turn:

• Reduces instances of contamination
• Improves scheme safety
• Improves recovery rates
• Reduces disposal costs for the scheme

Disposing of contaminated materials comes at a higher cost, which can be a point of contention. The App now enables these conversations, making it easier to support and explain higher costs when required, and creating a feedback loop leading to fewer contaminants, and higher recovery rates. Transparency, enabled by digitalisation, enables the success of the scheme.

Nathan Radley, General Manager of REMONDIS Integrated and Managed Services, says: “As we continue to evolve the technology, we could even get to the point in future at which the owner of a product stewardship scheme could send a collection site photos of the contamination, the weight of contamination and an invoice for the cost – a true user-pays system.

“We now have major manufacturing customers asking whether the App can be adapted for use on their sites to track waste and recyclables leaving their site. We are also discussing its application to the recycling of materials such as solar panels, coffee pods and batteries.”