Sectors
Sensor-led collection for contractors
Every journey to a container that did not need emptying is cost with no revenue attached. Until now there was no way to know which ones those were.
For a waste management contractor, fill-level data changes the economics of a contract in one of two directions. On fixed-price work, every lift you avoid without breaching the specification is margin recovered. On per-lift work, the same data is how you demonstrate to a client that the contracted frequency does not match reality — in either direction.
And in a tender, it is evidence about the client's own estate that nobody else in the room has.
Margin on fixed-price contracts
If you are paid a fixed sum to handle waste collection for an estate of containers to a specified standard, every journey to a container that did not need emptying is cost with no revenue attached. Most contractors know this in principle and have no way to quantify it, because the only way to find out whether a bin needed emptying was to drive there and look.
Stralsund's numbers show the scale of what is hiding in a typical street-bin round: weekly collections fell from 1,548 to 445 and weekly mileage from 1,677 km to 779 km once the bins could report their own fill level. Working hours on the task fell 30%. In a commercial operation those are not abstractions — they are vehicle hours, fuel, driver time and wear released back into the business or redeployed onto other customers.
Commercial cases
Four ways contractors use it
Recover margin on fixed-price work
Stop servicing containers that do not need it, within the terms of the specification, and redeploy the released capacity. This is the most direct case and the easiest to model — you already know your cost per lift and per kilometre.
Evidence a frequency change
On per-lift contracts, fill history is the only credible basis for renegotiating frequency — in either direction. It also protects you: where a client believes a frequency is too high, data showing containers genuinely at 90% is a stronger defence than assertion.
Prove SLA performance
Timestamped lift confirmations and threshold-breach records turn service level reporting from a spreadsheet you compile into a query you run. When a client raises a missed collection, you have the record rather than the argument.
Differentiate in a tender
Most bids compete on price against an identical specification. A bid that proposes instrumenting the estate, commits to a measured mileage and carbon reduction, and offers the authority a live evidence dashboard is competing on something else — and social value and carbon reduction are scored criteria in UK public procurement.
Operational fit
It sits inside your operation, not beside it
The practical concern for a contractor is usually integration: another portal, another login, another thing for drivers to ignore. Two routes avoid that.
Either your crews work in the driver app directly — the round, live fill percentages, navigation, one-tap lift confirmation, on-the-spot fault reporting — which also produces clean lift records for invoicing. Fanø Municipality connected its contractor this way specifically so that emptying orders and invoicing data flowed through a single system, reducing the contractor's administrative burden as well as the authority's.
Or fill-level data feeds your existing in-cab or route management platform through the API, so drivers keep the interface they know and the sensor layer sits underneath.
- Multi-client, multi-site. Separate estates, separate thresholds, separate reporting.
- Multi-fraction rounds. Vehicles collecting several streams in one pass are planned as such, not as several rounds.
- Clean invoicing data. Confirmed lifts, timestamped, per container — the same record the client sees.
- Client-facing transparency, on your terms. Giving a client a live view is a strong retention play when you are confident in the service.
- Portable across contracts. Sensors move with the containers or come back with you, depending on how the contract is written.
The lorry driver might be a little worried because he fears having to empty fewer containers, but he shouldn't be. He just avoids spending time checking containers that turn out to be only half full, and for which it makes no sense to empty and invoice. That time he could spend for another customer.Senior engineer, technical administration — Fanø Municipality, Denmark
Questions
Questions from contractors
If we empty fewer containers, do we not earn less?
It depends on the contract, and being clear about that is the first thing to work out. On fixed-price work the arithmetic is straightforwardly in your favour: fewer lifts for the same fee is recovered margin. On per-lift work the immediate effect can be a reduction in billed lifts, offset by the time your crews stop spending driving to and checking containers that did not need servicing — time that is unbilled either way and can be sold to another customer. It also puts you in the strongest possible position at renewal, because you can evidence what the estate actually needs.
Can we deploy this on a client's containers?
Yes, subject to the client's agreement, and it is worth raising with them explicitly because most authorities will welcome it. Sensors are non-invasive — fitted inside the lid with no wiring or modification — and remove cleanly. How ownership and removal are handled at contract end is something we set out in the agreement up front, because it needs to be settled before the sensors go on rather than during a mobilisation dispute.
Does it integrate with our existing in-cab system?
Yes, through the API. Fill-level readings, container registers and lift records can be delivered to your route management or in-cab platform so drivers keep the interface they already use. Alternatively crews work in our driver app directly, which is often simpler for a specific contract or a mixed fleet. We work out which route makes sense during discovery.
Is this useful in a bid?
Materially, yes. UK public waste tenders are usually scored on price against a common specification, with social value and carbon reduction as differentiating criteria. A bid that commits to instrumenting the estate, offers a measured mileage and CO₂ reduction, and gives the authority a live evidence dashboard is answering those criteria with numbers rather than intent. We can supply the technical annexes and the reference figures from published deployments to support a submission.
What about commercial and trade waste customers?
Same technology, simpler commercial logic. For trade waste customers on a scheduled service, fill data lets you right-size both the container and the frequency — which either reduces your cost or lets you sell a service level that genuinely matches what the customer needs. It is also a straightforward upsell: customers with visibility of their own waste production tend to stay.
Next step
See what your own bin data would say
A 90-day pilot on one round tells you exactly how much of your current collection effort is going to bins that were not full. No commitment beyond the pilot, and you keep the data.