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The development of a more circular frenchy industry
Waste collection is becoming more and more connected in France nowadays. Transforming waste into raw materials or a renewable energy source forms part of the current challenges. Co-founder of the sigrenEa company, Franck Charlet gives his opinion on these initiatives included in the development of a more circular frenchy industry.
Households produce approximately 38 million tonnes of waste a year in France, 18 million of which are residual household waste later buried or converted into energy. The remaining is stored in processing and recovering channels supplied by waste bins, drop-off points for voluntary disposal by local citizens or recycling bins. Today there are about 300 000 drop-off containers for voluntary disposal of waste mainly dedicated to selective collection. According to CITEO (ex Eco-Emballages), this container park may be expected to double within 5 or 8 years’ time. Some innovations in this area are smart containers that feed information back to a central platform. Also included are facilities for smart waste collections which are less present and have a smaller carbon footprint.
The environmental interests are obvious, but economic issues are at stake as well. Connected containers reduce the number of garbage trucks by 20 to 50% in cities. Indeed, they are emptied only when nearing full capacity. This IoT for waste combined with technologically advanced automated and faster trucks helps to lessen the environmental impact of trash 4 times. The SigrenEa company developed its own electronic devices for smart bins which transmit information in real-time about the filling level or dumping. Besides having its own supervision centre, it also proposes a business application for route optimization for waste management. The desire of this market leader owning a park of more than 15 000 connected containers is to strengthen its international position. To that end, it relies on the reliability of its technologies, the economic viability of regional authorities and users as well as on a valuable expertise with regards to local communities. The company also continually adapts to communication patterns rapidly evolving in the Internet of Things for waste management market.