AI being used to weed out foreign contaminants from Medicine Hat garbage bins

Solid waste superintendent Dallas Sutherland said that, to date, the program has been a major success.

“I think that it’s been quite effective and I think that we’re looking at a successful program that’s helping us reduce the contamination that we’re seeing at the landfill, which is great,” Sutherland said.

“We don’t want that material in the compost,” he added.

Cameras installed inside the hoppers of the trucks take pictures and allow the AI to search for foreign contaminants.

Sutherland added that manhours to clean contaminants from green bins and the compostable parts of the landfill has been reduced.

Prairie Robotics CEO Sam Dietrich said that the programs have been rolled out in other cities like Leduc and Lethbridge both of which have seen similar results.

Dietrich said the programs are not only fiscally responsible, but help leverage existing programs to prolong the life of landfills.

“We have this great infrastructure in place for compost programs. We have great infrastructure in place for recycling programs. We have finite resources,” Dietrich said.

“Let’s leverage these existing programs to their fullest potential and the way we can do that is by reducing contamination.”

Dietrich said that lithium batteries being found in green bins are common complaints and pose a serious safety concern, as they’ve received numerous reports of trucks catching fire.

by Adrian St.Onge

AI being used to weed out foreign contaminants from Medicine Hat garbage bins

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