Photo Credit: BigBelly Solar Trashcans
Besides Sesame Street’s Oscar the Grouch, I bet you thought you’d never hear of a talking trash can. But every day in Philadelphia, over 500 trash cans converse with the Department of Street’s management team.
The BigBelly solar-powered trash-compaction units wirelessly communicate via a short-message service--i.e., text messaging (yes, even trash cans are texting). A central server allows managers to review the status of all BigBelly trash cans in real time.
“You can minimize the number of trips to remove the waste from the containers by knowing the status of each container,” says Richard Kennelly, vice president of marketing for BigBelly Solar. “By tracking that data over time, you can optimize your routes to minimize the number of trips while maximizing your savings.”