Our citizen engagement, recycling management software tools don’t just do what they were designed for – helping out cities, counties, waste haulers, educational institutions, and more with their curbside waste, bulky pickup, organic waste disposal, and more.
While they do those things excellently, they are also customizable and usable in almost every way you can dream of.
Here’s some customer examples of the Unique Use Cases possible with our mobile app and web tools.
An App for Emergency Response & Other Service Alerts:
No matter the emergency, there are standard best practices to follow:
Calendar Events | Send a Service Alert | Waste Wizard |
|---|---|---|
Update your Calendar to reflect changes in your service. This will ensure your users receive the most factual reminders and reduce confusion.
Add a new, temporary event OR
Bump existing events to the new service day. | Send an initial Service Alert out to grab the attention of your users. Continue to send, as needed with updates.
If there is ongoing messaging as a part of the emergency response plan, program a weeks or months long Campaign. | If clean-up and disposal efforts are going to take some time, edit or add materials to your Wizard to reflect current disposal guidelines.
Add a Waste Wizard Banner that will display special messaging at the top of the Wizard. |
Now let’s view specific customer responses to a variety of disaster management situations.
Flooding
Service Alert
Campaign
Waste Wizard – new material added “Food Cleanup”
Storm Debris
New Calendar Event Added
Service Alert
Waste Wizard – new material added “Storm Debris”
Winter Weather
The City of Waco, TX communicated a re-route using our platform – they also saw a spike in mobile app usage during the ‘Big Freeze’.
“We didn’t have to go to a water boil [during the big freeze] because we were able to relay the notice through the app.” – Ashley Millerd, Outreach Coordinator and Solid Waste Administrator.
Service Alert
Existing Events Bumped
New Calendar Event Added
Tornadoes & Hurricanes
Service Alerts
Forest Fires
Service Alerts – updates sent daily
Campaigns
Heat Waves
Campaign
Service Alerts
Other Service Alerts
The City of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada uses the app to notify people about street sweepings, outages for electricity and water, and other service alerts, with plans to communicate information about snow routes & more in the future, too.
Special Customized Widgets:
For the Metro of Nashville, TN we built a custom drop-off sites widget, that worked alongside the Collection Calendar, Waste Wizard, Waste Sorting Game, and Mobile App to turn our waste management software into instant results.
“By the middle of the summer of 2021, we had reduced that 46 percent contamination rate down to 28.6%,” Jenn Harrman, Zero Waste Program Manager for Metro Nashville Services said. “That was huge for us.”
American Refuse, a waste hauler in Wasco, CA felt that they were leaving money on the table, and if they could simplify the payment process for their customers, they could ramp up revenues and profits.
So we built them a custom bill pay widget.
“We can actually go out and get more business,” said Jeff Martin, owner and manager.
The City of Sunnyvale, CA was having an issue with participation in their food waste program – so we built them a custom widget.
Karen Gissibl, Environmental Programs Manager says the city’s food-scrap carts are split into two sections, one for food scraps and one for garbage.
“Some food scraps programs allow customers to put their food in with the yard trimmings so it’s not as messy,” Gissibl said. But “because we only take food in our program — the food side of the cart gets really dirty and stinky pretty quickly.”
So much so that people have complained about the condition of their carts, Gissibl said, adding that dirty, smelly carts are a barrier to community participation in the program.
“So we’re like, hey, why don’t we see if we can do a cart exchange, where twice a year customers can get their dirty cart exchanged by the hauler, for a clean one? We worked with Routeware to create a tool so customers could go through the app to schedule the exchange.”
Mission accomplished.
The City of East Hants, NS started off with our standard widgets, and in time, they added a tab to their web widget where folks could easily report an illegal dumpsite, and another tab where residents could find information about the Waste Management Centre.
These were custom built for their specific local waste service needs, additions to our pre-existing solution – courtesy of Routeware.
Standard Ways, With A Twist:
The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI placed QR Codes directly at the point of decision that link to our Waste Wizard tool. This led to increased engagement and less questions from students and staff on campus looking for waste management solutions.
The university also utilized our extensive campaign features for special announcements, which helped them improve their local waste services.
During a two-week period in February 2019, the City of Phoenix, AZ hosted a school recycling competition which involved 5 schools and 1,800 students.
Their Waste Sorting Game had a total of 4,437 plays during this time – Peak plays were 1,024 on February 8th alone!
Educating the next generation of recyclers helped improve the waste management sustainability of the city’s programs.
The City of Durango, CO had been live for 1 year and wanted to see reminders for collection day. During April-May 2019 they ran a targeted campaign that incentivized residents to sign up for collection day reminders and receive a $5 rebate applied to their next City utility bill and a bumper sticker.
Before this campaign, they had 30 active reminders – at the end of May they had 163 reminders, a raise of 133 in one month!
Their overall goal was to utilize our efficient communication tool with residents to reduce contamination & increase diversion – the more folks signed up the better to meet these goals! They publicized it using grant-funded newspaper ads and social media.
Who says you can’t use use software for waste management in creative ways?
St. Louis County, MO had been live for 1 year and wanted to see an increase in their wizard search metrics. During the month of March 2022 they ran a contest that coincided with their monthly billing insert that incentivized residents to use the waste wizard and be entered to win a prize.
They had over 500 contest entries over the course of the month – which led to an increase in wizard searches. St. Louis County now has the second highest adoption rate for all large municipalities who only use the Waste Wizard.
The key to improving your local waste management system is to educate your residents and automate service alerts, service requests, and information finding.
That’s what Routeware does.
Could The Tools Work For You?
It’s not only Haulers, Cities, Counties, & Educational Institutions that use our tools.
As an example, the Fort Hood Army Base is “the U.S. Army leader in recycling,” The Recycler reports. With help from its Routeware digital tools, Fort Hood’s recycling program works to educate soldiers and civilians alike about ways to collaborate for “a greener future,” using $89,000 in recycling revenue to sponsor 32 soldier and family events.
We also partner with nonprofits like Recycle BC to reach all residents in their jurisdiction with our proven and trusted waste software platform.
If you think you could use waste management technology to help with your local smart waste disposal, get in touch with us, and we can discuss if we’re right for you.
As a communication platform, the applications of our Community Mobile App tool, and the Service Alert capabilities we offer writ large, are endless. Never mind the above examples – if you have an idea that would be perfect for municipal, provincial, state, or federal recycling & waste solutions, let’s talk about it.
It just might be possible.
P.S. Have you tried out Routeware City yet? It’s an interactive experience, allowing you to see how our tools can help engage your community, reduce contamination, and help your residents self-serve.
Test it out today!
