Some municipalities mainly want Prairie’s services as a way to send personalized postcards to the households with the highest contamination rates, while other cities have added a feature that sends a formal warning letter after three strikes. “It gives municipalities the ability to, through our platform, automatically escalate that education,” he said. Some municipalities are more interested in tracking specific kinds of recycling, organics or green waste diversion, or tracking such diversion rates during set periods of time, he said. In Olympia, Washington, the city accesses that data from a mobile app, which helps determine where employees will go to conduct in-person “lid lift” audits. These audits are for households “with those repeat, continuous issues that don’t improve with a postcard alone,” he said. “I think a lot of people see our technology is fully automated... But for communities that explicitly want to continue that feedback [in person], we’re happy to support that, too.” Haulers with commercial contracts have also used the technology to help narrow down where specific contamination might originate from on a building to building basis, he said. “What we’ve seen is that waste haulers want to see this data in real time. They want to be able to have their teams engage commercial clients the same day to resolve these issues,” he said. Many of the projects start as a pilot. Dietrich said the majority of the cities where Prairie operates are now on a long-term, recurring contract. It still operates in Regina, Saskatchewan, the location of Prairie’s first project. Prairie is also expanding its technology to be more integrated with other recycling technologies and apps, he said. The company can now sync its technology with apps like Recycle Coach, which helps residents set up collection day reminders and offers sortation pointers for a particular region. In the Okanagan region of British Columbia, for example, Recycle Coach subscribers will receive inapp notifications from Prairie based on contamination data from their address. division manager, in a news release announcing the program.“Educating residents on what is accepted in our curbside program, and reducing contamination, can have positive impacts on the program for all residents of Tacoma.” The pilot will roll out to residential recycling routes in phases over the next year. Tacoma officials say some neighborhoods will begin receiving postcards starting this month, but residents won’t face fines or other penalties for contamination during the pilot. The project will continue “through the life of the grant” and is expected to be reviewed in June 2027, according to the city’s Environmental Services Department. Dietrich said Prairie Robotics can tailor its “toolbox” of services for each municipality’s needs. Tacoma wanted the ability for its route supervisors to manage and monitor contamination within the areas they’re assigned, as opposed to some other cities that examine the data on a citywide or regional basis, he said. “Every municipality is running a very similar program in terms of what the deliverables are, but they’re all running it in their own unique way and use case,” Dietrich said. 8 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 06, ISSUE 08
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