South Gloucestershire residents will soon be able to ask Alexa to help with the recycling
The council is looking into how smart-tech can improve waste collection
Residents will be given new smart tech to remind them when bin day is and what waste goes in each recycling container by using their mobile phone camera.
It follows teething problems as South Gloucestershire Council moved to a new waste contract last year which included the first major changes to kerbside collection days and, in some cases, weeks, in more than 20 years, with black bin rounds reducing from two- to three-weekly from this May.
Plans in place for the new service included “an updated app which will allow residents to easily identify what can and can’t be recycled and to use their camera to identify the correct container for recycling”.
Householders could also use a new voice-activated Alexa Skills service to ask when their kerbside collection day was and have audible notification reminders and guidance on how to dispose of specific items without the need to look up the information.
Councillors will be given an update at the meeting on the performance of the new waste contract during its first six months.
In a big change, while waste and recycling collections continued to be outsourced to a private company, the local authority took over operating the waste transfer stations and household waste recycling centres.
That included the TUPE transfer of more than 50 staff into the council, while over half of the bin lorries are being replaced in the first year.
There is also the rollout of two new collection services – for soft plastics and hygiene and nappy waste.
The report said most residents experienced minimal disruption during the initial transition in August because additional rounds were put in place, along with changing some routes.
But it said the technology changes were more challenging than expected because they included integrating an entirely new back-office system with an existing customer service set-up.