Bigbelly Blog: Beyond the Bin

The Municipality of Södertälje, Sweden produced a fun summer-themed video featuring their forward-looking waste coordinator, Tomas. This city located ~20 miles outside of Stockholm uses the Bigbelly system to reduce litter in their public spaces and to offer Wi-Fi hotspot service to their constituents enjoying the spaces.

As reported by ABC Channel 7:   Beachgoers in one Long Island town can expect to see less garbage and a lot more people on their cell phones. Until now, cell service on South Jamesport and Iron Pier beaches in Riverhead has been spotty at best. Now, new trash compactors made by Bigbelly will be installed. These solar-powered compactors will have a antenna to supply cell service for people nearby, and the garbage cans will notify sanitation when they need to be emptied.

As reported in the Riverhead News-Review, a beachfront New York community is exploring what's possible with Bigbelly's multi-purpose platform: Smart Waste and Small Cell. Read on for more:

Riverhead Town will be trying out new smart trash compactors meant to reduce trash woes and also offer Wi-Fi and cell phone connection for beachgoers at South Jamesport Beach and Iron Pier Beach. The solar-powered receptacles will be installed [...] through a partnership between Bigbelly, a company that manufactures smart waste and recycling bins designed for cities, and Verizon. A cell antenna is attached to each compactor.

"Trash bin Wi-Fi" - It may sound like a fictional invention from a sci-fi movie... but it's here today.

Trash is, and always has been, a core service that needs to be delivered to a community, retailer, or campus. Bigbelly modernizes this core service delivery by providing smart, compacting, solar-powered stations that hold more and optimize waste management practices and routine across the world. The connected system communicates over cellular networks to report its real-time status into a centralized software which sends notifications and logs data for analysis and reporting.

The Bigbelly Smart Waste & Recycling System goes beyond data-driven waste management. We are excited to highlight the City of Louisville, Kentucky and applaud this community for leveraging required core infrastructure primarily used for public space to deliver more value to its citizens by way of Public Space Wi-Fi service hosted in their Bigbelly system.

Learn more below from the City of Louisville's recent release to unveil this powerful step in the West Louisville Neighborhood Wi-Fi Project:

The City of Lousiville takes their Bigbelly smart waste and recycling system to the next level as a multi-purpose core infrastructure in their Russell neighborhood. At bus stations along the public transit system, the Wi-Fi hotspot hidden in plain sight (housed in the cavity between the waste and recycling station) delivered critical Internet access for locals, whether waiting at the bus stop or visiting a local business organization. 

Further defining and developing their Smart Cities, municipalities around the globe are testing ways to equip existing street ‘furniture’ – parking meters, lamp posts, trash bins, and more – with 'smart city' applications, devices, and sensors for more intelligent ways to manage and maintain city services and infrastructures.