Tags for a cleaner environment

---

Say what a waste bin does not have to endure. Not only does it have to withstand frying summer heat as well as the winter’s biting cold with snow and ice, in addition it is heavily loaded with garbage and, in most cases, exposed to a rather careless handling.

“An RFID tag that are able to function flawlessly in such environment must of course be very robust and reliable,” says Martin Abelson, Marketing Manager at Botek in Ulricehamn. “When we started to build management systems for waste emptying via RFID during the second half of the 1990s, only the tags from Areff Systems met the requirements we set up for the tags.”

Each tag is verified

And Areff has continued to deliver. On average, there are about 150 000 tags per year, which through Botek’s care end up on waste bins around Sweden and in Europe.

“Although we buy large quantities of tags every year, we have never had any delivery problems. The deliveries have always been on time. If something unexpected happens and we end up in an urgent need, Areff has a minor safety stock that we can use, which is of course very convenient”, explains Martin.

“Another strong reason why we have continued to use Areff,” he continues, “is that we know that we always get the quality we strive for if we use Areff. For example, every single tag is individually verified and tested to withstand both cold and heat before being sent to us.”

Reliability is important, as broken or malfunctioning tags create a lot of extra work. “A single broken tag is possible to manage. But say that an entire municipality would start an inventory and labeling of their waste bins using our RFID tags, then it is a nightmare to have a lot of defective tags that can not be read and registered.”

Better control, better quality

On the other hand, a functioning system for identifying individual waste bins is very effective and creates benefits for both operators and households, Martin points out. “RFID technology in combination with our vehicle-mounted scales means that the control and quality of the waste handling is significantly better. For example, by reducing the number of missed emptying of waste bins or avoiding the emptying for customers who has not payed for the service, since the services performed can be verified.”

The system also allows each bin to be weighed during emptying and the weight of the contents is recorded in a secure way. This is absolutely crucial in municipalities where households pay for their garbage collection per kilo.

There are also municipalities that carefully document and monitor the waste volumes, and with registered emptying weight on each individual waste bin, they have every opportunity to produce the statistics needed.

“But even garbage collection companies that have a fixed tariff benefit greatly from the weighing,” explains Martin Abelson, “With better knowledge of the vehicles’ load, transportation can be optimized to minimize fuel consumption and emissions, which is yet another way to reduce the environmental impact.”