Recycling bin contamination is a huge problem, so last week we took some new technology out to a group of government and non government schools for testing; it passed with flying colours. This problem though is much broader than schools; just look at almost any office staff room recycling bin, or wait to see the cleaners throwing the contents of contaminated recycling bins into the general waste stream. Our mission with Charopy is to solve this problem for anything non-kerbside, as contaminated recycling going to landfill is not being solved just with signage and education, but it can be solved with technology. The most valuable waste in any organisation is container deposit scheme material, so even for companies not interested in the fact that a recycled aluminium can creates around 95% less CO2 than a newly created can, isolating CDS waste can actually reduce your overall waste collection costs. Thank you to St Rose Catholic Primary School from Broken Bay Diocese for allowing me to share this video.
We are still testing some different designs, so the form of the bin lid will almost certainly change over the coming months, but the technology that enables this to be done cost effectively was the hard part and this has now been solved. We are in discussions with various corporate clients about modifying the existing lid that fits on a standard 240 litre wheelie bin, as the office bin will look very different to this. We are expecting less complexity in that version as it is unlikely the office bin will need a screen, and it probably won't need a Near Field Communication antenna either if it is purely designed to eliminate contamination and is not required to make payment to the person depositing the rubbish into the recycling bin. So in some ways the primary school smart bin is the most complex one we envisage - when you are specifically designing something to work in places where a true reverse vending machine is not viable due to cost or size, and you want something that does not require a technician to install or service the item, then less complexity is a good thing.
