Capturing collection efficiencies allows municipalities and private haulers alike to spend less on fuel — a quickly increasing cost — while balancing budgets and keeping carbon emissions in check.

Changing collection programs is an operational feat for certain, but true success can only be claimed when the people who use the services understand what’s happening to participate in programs properly.

Overhauling bulky waste collection to become more efficient and effective was the topic at the annual conference of the Georgia Chapter of SWANA in LaGrange, Georgia. At the show, City of Atlanta’s Director of Public Works, Moses Tejuoso, and Program Management Officer Kanika Greenlee presented “Not Such a Big Lift: Bulky Collection Made Easy, With Digital Tools.” Routeware’s Brittany Loffredo joined them on the stage.

All About Atlanta

From recyclables and yard trimmings to trash, the City of Atlanta’s Department of Public Works provides curbside collection and other environmental services for more than 100,000 households and 10,000 businesses and organizations.  

In 2018, the city drastically overhauled its bulky collection services, moving from a quadrant-based weekly collection program to a more efficient system requiring residents to schedule their bulky-item collection in advance. Not only has this improved the city’s aesthetic by reducing the amount of time bulky items sit at the curb or other collection point, but it has also allowed the city’s Solid Waste Services crew to plan ahead and better allocate its staff and vehicles.

Implementing this tall order on a short timeline wasn’t easy. But with diligence, a stellar digital communication plan and a suite of digital tools from ReCollect, the City of Atlanta empowered its community members to make the most of their services while streamlining processes for its staff.

Planning Makes Perfect

Revamping services, changing collection days and adding a step for the community are undertakings on their own. But to carry out these changes, however, the city had to get the word out to the people they serve. So, it leapt into planning mode, working to raise community awareness for the upcoming changes, Greenlee said.

And the city continued to plan its new program implementation all the way to launch date — which was only a span of about a couple of months. During this time, among the challenges the city faced, Greenlee said the city was nearing the beginning of a new fiscal year and needed to reduce its bulky item collection costs while also allowing for time to engage with stakeholders.

The city spread the word of its collection changes, telling the community that it was hard at work to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of Atlanta’s solid waste services by optimizing collection routes.

The city connected with people through myriad platforms, including social media; radio, newspaper and television ads; robo calls and direct mailers — and added the ReCollect App the city named Atlanta Solid Waste Services (SWS), plus web widgets featuring the Collection Calendar, Waste Wizard and Special Collection Tool that allow residents to schedule bulk collections. The city also stepped up trainings for staff members so they could better help the people in the community acclimate to the changes.

Tried and True Tools

Atlanta’s big collection changes not only limit the amount of time large items sit at collection sites and curbs, but it also helps balance the workloads for city crews. As the city moved from a four-day collection schedule to five, it also reduced the distance its vehicles traveled by about 20 percent per route.

To reap the benefits of these changes and help more than a hundred thousand people in the community get on board, the city promoted its new digital tools and app, encouraging folks to sign up for customized reminders through the tools via email, phone, and text.

All of these new tools allow the people of Atlanta to easily find their collection days while offering more information about how to properly dispose of items, said Tejuoso.

To get the ball rolling, the city made good use of the tools’ customizable features and called on ReCollect’s notification system to configure automatic prompts through its mobile app and website to help the people in the community better navigate the new system and collection processes.

A Difference You Can Measure

Atlanta’s suite of digital tools has successfully allowed the city to revamp its collection services — and the metrics show its residents are putting them to good use. The city can check its metrics in a few ways, allowing staff to gain insights into what people are searching for and more. Not only can the city adapt its programming and education efforts based on this information, but it can use the data to illustrate the changes and benefits its programs and tools make to its stakeholders, too.

According to metrics presented at the event, the people of Atlanta so far have searched for information on how to recycle some 293,025 materials through the city’s Waste Wizard; used the Collection Calendar to carry out 833,653 schedule views; created 13,470 reminders; and created 102,100 Bulk Collection requests through the Special Collection Tool.

The city has also received excellent reviews for its app. One reviewer wrote that the app is not only useful to learn what you can and cannot recycle in Atlanta, “but further than that, I can literally search (for) the item and it’ll tell me where and when I can recycle these materials. I am impressed with this app model, which shows how governments can make our lives easier and simplifies what used to be complicated in Atlanta.”

Another reviewer wrote that the app was straightforward and easy to navigate. It offers useful information, plus the ease of scheduling pickups for larger items from appliances to furniture.

Tejuoso said the city saw a major spike in app downloads in the initial rollout of the program, and those spikes continue “every time we would have a mailer or comms go out.”

The “timeline to implement was pretty quick,” Greenlee said. But with only about a month or two to get everything together, they made it happen. “You just have to get it done,” she said.

The changes, Tejuoso said, had the biggest impact on how the city collects bulky items. When people need a bulky item collection, “now they have it at their fingertips.”

The scheduling tool plus the city’s revamped bulky collection process have also made an enormous difference for Atlanta. Crews are no longer out in search of pickups, and residents no longer have to wait. The city opens appointments based on staffing levels for any given day and split up scheduled stops among its fleet — all without the headache and eyesore of random large items popping up at the curb.

With all of that taken care of, “now,” Tejuoso said, “we are able to do more planning.”  

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