An intelligent waste bin that talks back

For the Dutch, a waste bin that talks is nothing new. When they used to visit the theme park "De Efteling" in their childhood, they would stumble upon a waste bin called "Holle Bolle Gijs" (Big Fat Gijs). It said: "Paper here - thank you"! In 2018 the Dutch company Procomat launched a modern version: the WasteMate.

This public waste bin can do a whole lot of neat stuff. For starters, it can hold lots of waste, because it compresses the waste six times on average. For this it needs energy, which it generates all by itself with a solar panel on top. It communicates with home base: come empty me, I'm almost full! And then there is the sound. During my visit last Wednesday the Procomat team was readying a WasteMate for a large city. When throwing in trash, in the future the people in this city can expect a round of applause!

Procomat's CFO Mr. Ronald Bobbe explained that the WasteMates are particularly useful for city centers with a strong public waste load (especially during events or in party districts) and also in remote locations where emptying the bins takes a lot of time and effort. In both cases the key is to know when the bins are full. For this the WasteMate comes with a user friendly app: the Clean City Manager.

All this comes with a price tag of course. But you would be surprised to know that, depending on the circumstances, the payback time is less than two years. And more importantly, it is an investment in a smart, sustainable solution, lowering CO2 emissions and fighting street litter. On top of this, it gives the public space a way better look. With approximately 600,000 public waste bins in the Netherlands alone, the WasteMate has a sunny future ahead of it, and opportunities abroad appear to be endless.