ROAF uses digitalization to improve waste collection customer communications.

Limerick, May 27 - ROAF uses digitalization to improve waste collection customer communications.

The Customer Portal and Mobile Workforce options in AMCS Route Optimisation mean more two-way dialogues with customers and interaction with drivers.

Located in the historical Romerike district of Norway, the inter-municipal Romerike Waste Processing IKS (Romerike Avfallsforedling IKS), or ROAF, works with the collection, sorting, recycling, and reuse of household and commercial waste. The company serves more than 200.000 inhabitants (90.000 households) and 650 commercial customers in the municipalities of Aurskog-Høland, Enebakk, Gjerdrum, Lillestrøm, Lørenskog, Nittedal and Rælingen. ROAF operates seven recycling stations, one active and six completed landfills and provides more than 350 collection points for glass and metal across these seven municipalities.

ROAF owns and operates one of Europe’s most modern waste sorting facilities, which processes regular and organic waste and five types of plastic at a total of about 75.000 tonnes annually. With their approximately 140 employees and a focus on the circular economy, the company works extensively to manage the resources from waste in an environmentally sound manner and ensure they are given a new lease of life in new products. ROAF has the ambitious goal of achieving 70% material recycling and reuse by 2030.

To assist in achieving that goal, ROAF has chosen to implement a single, more efficient waste management and route planning system to replace the multiple systems currently in use. AMCS Route Optimisation will not only enable a better organization, operation, and overview of their waste collection services, it will also give them much control over their customer and container management – a primary reason for moving to a new system.

Getting a handle on nonconformance

Crucial to ROAF’s choice of system was CRM functionality that can gather all the relevant customer information in one place so that it is readily accessible, especially for the drivers using the Mobile Workforce application. It also needed to handle customer lookups on government information systems, which the AMCS system easily facilitates through its Open API functionality. In addition, the AMCS Route Optimisation system will automatically integrate orders, provide overviews of customer portfolios, and allow differentiation in disposal fees.

For ROAF, a key element in reaching the goal of 70% material recycling and reuse is a reduction in nonconformance to waste separate guidelines. They put customer management at the forefront in the selection of a new waste management system. The integrated web-based Customer Portal option gives them the ability to maintain a two-way dialogue with customers. Customers can log in with an ID to access information, order bins, request collections, review their account, and more.

“Ideally, we would like to be able to deliver digital notices to our customers instead of the paper stickers placed on containers for nonconformance today,” says Svein Erik Engebretsen, Digitalisation Project Manager at ROAF. “But we are also looking at more creative and positive ways to raise awareness and encourage people to pay attention to how they dispose of their waste. We recently started a type of lottery where customers can write their name and phone number on special green bags that they use to deposit biowaste in the containers and each month we select one for a prize of 5.000 NOK. Three times a year, we offer an extra prize of 10.000 NOK. ROAF pulls out bags daily from the sorting plant and places these in its own containers. The winner is then drawn from the selection located in this container. This is all done manually.

Streamlining the logistics of inter-municipal waste collection

Moving to AMCS Route Optimisation will provide the type of advanced route planning ROAF needs to organize the waste collection and processing for seven different municipalities into a single system. It will also give them a much better overview of the business and the day-to-day operations with the insights they need to increase efficiency and further simplify the planning process. The company currently operates around 48 vehicles of several different types to collect waste from an assortment of container types. These range from 140-liter household bins to containers that require cranes to lift.

A new trend in the waste storage and collection for apartment blocks is sealed underground containers that can hold up to 8000 liters of waste and are emptied using suction systems instead of lifting. The advantage of this system is that it is better protected from the elements and pests. ROAF has already invested in one vehicle to collect from these types of containers and will probably add more in the future. They expect that being able to empty these types of containers based on fill levels will become increasingly important as more multi-household buildings are built with this waste collection solution.

ROAF also expects digital improvements to allow easier and more efficient communication and interaction with their driver. The Route Optimisation system can generate digital driving lists directly to the drivers through the Mobile Workforce option, as well as facilitate ID recognition and location placement control for containers. In addition, it offers ROAF a way to plan collections on the basis of container capacity, fill-level forecasts, and on-demand emptying instead of driving fixed schedules that result in inefficient use of vehicle capacity.