City of Atlanta, Georgia

Overview

In January 2017, the City of Atlanta and SmartCity announced a six-month pilot with the goal of improving the operational efficiency of city departments and increasing recycling participation rates and effectiveness throughout Atlanta’s neighborhoods. SmartCity’s municipal technology, SmartCityTM, is currently installed in all city-owned refuse trucks serving as a data collection tool to provide baseline data and valuable insights into Atlanta’s waste and recycling services and trends.

SmartCity was installed in the City of Atlanta’s entire fleet of 89 garbage, recycling, and yard waste vehicles, servicing approximately 96,000 residential customers.

After the conclusion of the pilot the following results were identified:

Potential savings and revenue

SmartCity identified a combination of actual and potential cost savings of up to $783,453 annually. These improvements included areas such as increasing landfill diversion, further optimizing waste and recycling routes, and reducing maintenance costs. In addition, there were several opportunities for the city to use data collected throughout the pilot to possibly generate revenue.

Landfill Diversion

After analyzing data collected by SmartCity’s technology, the city reduced the amount of recyclables going to landfill by 83%. In absolute terms that equaled 355 tons of recyclable material being kept out of landfills.

Fleet Maintenance

SmartCity’s data showed that only 10 trucks were responsible for two-thirds of potential maintenance issues. Of the critical fault codes flagged during the pilot, 67% were associated with these 10 trucks out of a fleet comprised of 80+ vehicles. Additionally, 43% of critical fault codes were associated with only five trucks, specifically. The City could therefore focus on these trucks to reduce downtime and keep more trucks on the road.

Route Optimization

In a route optimization project SmartCity ran for the city, we unlocked major potential cost savings and increased efficiencies. SmartCity adjusted the city’s solid waste service schedule from four to five days, decreasing the total amount of trash routes per day and balancing the number of hours driven among drivers.

Sustainability

SmartCity and the City made changes to waste and recycling operations that delivered savings of 4,752 MTCO2e. This is the equivalent of avoided greenhouse gas emissions from 1,656 tons of waste recycled instead of landfilled, or 237 garbage trucks full of waste being recycled instead of landfilled.