TACOMA TESTS AI-ENABLED CURBSIDE RECYCLING CAMERAS Source: www.smartcitiesdive.com, Megan Quinn, Senior Editor, First Published Aug 14th, 2025 DIVE BRIEF: • Prairie Robotics, a Canadian firm that offers artificial intelligence-enabled camera systems for recycling collection trucks, is expanding its partnerships with municipalities in North America that want to reduce contamination in their curbside streams.The company works with about 40 cities in the U.S. and Canada. • The company recently partnered with the City of Tacoma, Washington, on a two-year project to help educate residents on what can and cannot be recycled in the city’s curbside program. It’s funded by a $1.8 million grant from the U.S. EPA, announced in 2023 as part of the agency’s Recycling Education and Outreach grant program. • Prairie has also recently launched partnerships in Centerville, Ohio; Livermore, California; and Springdale, Arkansas, “with more that are in the pipeline,” said CEO Sam Dietrich. The company also works with haulers such as GFL Environmental and Waste Connections, who use the tech’s data to track metrics including bin setouts or overfilled containers. DIVE INSIGHT: Collection vehicles have long had cameras meant for safety and fleet management reasons, but Prairie is among the companies capitalizing on a newer use for AI-enabled on-truck cameras: measuring recycling contamination in real time. The system can detect contamination, such as food waste or trash, at the moment the material enters the recycling truck.Then, it determines the origin of that contamination and can send customized messages or postcards to residents at the associated address with pointers on how to recycle correctly. The technology has gathered momentum in the last few years as municipalities and private haulers both grapple with contamination-related costs and seek better ways to achieve cleaner, higher-value recycled commodities, Dietrich said. Through its use of Prairie’s cameras,Tacoma aims to gain insight into residents’ recycling habits and use the data to better tailor recycling and contamination messaging “Contamination impacts how we can deliver services and the cost of those services for all residents,” said Lewis Griffith, Tacoma’s Solid Waste Management Opening Lines 7 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 06, ISSUE 08
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