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A new program from Southern Michigan waste disposal and collection company Richfield Management – Rewards for Recycling – uses RFID technology to incentivize residents who recycle their waste by offering a discount to a local restaurant or retail store. Since the company launched the program six months ago, 80,000 families in six towns in Genesee and Oakland counties in Michigan have joined the event, said Daniel Garman, the company’s sales representative.
Rewards for Recycling tracks the number of times a household leaves a recycling bin on the side of the road waiting to be collected, and rewards the household for that number of times. The local government pays for this service. The monthly collection fee for the project is about 75 cents per household, Garman said, and the cost will either be covered by the local community or shared among residents’ garbage collection costs.
The system uses passive EPC Gen 2 UHF RFID tags, produced by tag encapsulator Metalcraft, with Alien Technology Squiggle inlays, housed in a rugged, adhesive housing. Labels are affixed to the front and back of the recycling bin.
The two RFID tags of the bin contain the same unique ID number. An Alien ALR-9900 Gen 2 RFID reader mounted inside the vehicle reads the ID code of each bin tag as the garbage collection truck moves along the collection route. The reader is connected to a touch screen computer in the cab which contains a GPS receiver. Universal Tracking Systems designed, implemented and developed the software to collect reader tag data and the GPS coordinates of each tag read and the truck at that time. The software uses this data to update individual households’ garbage collection records in a central database.
Based on this information, Rewards for Recycling then sends discount coupons or other incentives to participating families on behalf of the local agency. In addition, raffle tickets are given away, and households who recycle their garbage every week have the best chance of winning.
Unlike other similar programs, Rewards for Recycling does not reward based on the number of items placed in the recycling bin, but on the number of times. Families who take their recycling bins out each week receive higher rewards. However, Garman says even households that never recycle receive small prizes — like $1-$2 discount coupons, enticing them to get a higher-value coupon for recycling.
Rewards for Recycling targets communities with traditionally low recycling rates, which are 25% – 30% lower than the national average. According to Garman, the campaign has worked. “Recycling rates have increased,” he said, and in some areas, such as Davidson Township, recycling rates have risen from 18 percent to 50 percent. “The goal is to get every non-recycling household to start. Now, recycling is actually cheaper and less space-efficient than dumping all of your waste in a landfill.”
Al Gatt, chairman of Universal Tracking, said the installation and optimization of the RFID readers on the 14 garbage collection trucks required some custom engineering, especially for the reader antennas, which are pointed to the side of the road and have a stable read range of 30 feet.
Initially, drivers needed to read the labels of recycling bins with hand-held RFID readers. But that option doesn’t work, Gatt said. “Handhelds are not suitable for this environment, especially in winter”
The solution uses GPS receivers, which not only allow the system to easily match recycling bins to users, but also allow local communities to track trucks in real time through a cellular communication module embedded with a touchscreen computer.
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