Pittsburgh’s smart trash cans helping cut labor hours in half

More than 1,000 public garbage cans containing sensors that track how full the cans are have been deployed around Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Department of Public Works (DPW) recently announced. 

The DPW first proposed adopting the cans in 2017 when it recognized the need to replace hundreds of old trash cans around the city. The smart cans were chosen to help with efficiencies and cost savings. The city’s vendor for the receptacles is Dunkirk, Maryland-based Victor Stanley.

Initial studies by DPW and the Department of Innovation and Performance have shown that the cans result in savings of at least half the labor hours needed for the emptying typical cans, allowing DPW to reallocate resources to other needed tasks, such as pothole patching, litter picking and weed and debris clearing. 

“The smart cans allow DPW to offer better refuse services to Pittsburgh residents and neighborhood business districts while freeing up our workers to do other work to keep the city tidy,” DPW Director Mike Gable says. 

“Based on our analysis, we expect that the smart litter cans will give us the ability to make process improvements that will reduce the amount of labor hours spent on emptying garbage cans by at least half,” Matt Jacob, the project manager for the program for the Department of Innovation and Performance, says. “As a result, DPW will be able to reallocate those resources to other tasks." 

DPW is in talks with unions representing its workers to possibly open a centralized litter can division and introduce expanded weekend garbage can collection services in business districts. 

The city’s capital budgets from 2017-19 earmarked a total of $670,000 for smart can purchases, covering both new cans and lids with sensors to retrofit existing cans.