Grantee Research Project Results
Final Report: AI-Based Bin Tagging Platform for Regulatory Compliance
EPA Contract Number: 68HERC23C0028Title: AI-Based Bin Tagging Platform for Regulatory Compliance
Investigators: Balachandran, Nikhil
Small Business: Zabble Inc.
EPA Contact: Richards, April
Phase: I
Project Period: December 1, 2022 through May 31, 2023
Project Amount: $99,458
RFA: Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I (2023) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: SBIR - Water , SBIR - Homeland Security , SBIR - Sustainability , SBIR - Air and Climate
Description:
California’s Short-Lived Climate Pollutant Reduction Law (SB 1383) is the largest change to it's recycling and waste industry since the 1980s. The law establishes new organic waste collection and recycling programs, food recovery programs, and requirements for jurisdictions to procure recycled organic products, contamination monitoring audits and outreach. All of these activities form a coordinated effort to reduce the amount of organic waste that is sent to landfills by 75 percent by 2025, an action that will greatly reduce the impact of climate change.
The overall goal of this Phase I proposal is to develop an efficient tool for contamination monitoring audits to help jurisdictions comply with SB1383’s requirements. Zabble will develop a fully functional, self-serve, efficient, low-cost solution for jurisdictions, haulers and consultants in California by updating the AI model and user workflows. Zabble’s solution has the potential to reduce the time it takes to collect, aggregate and report data by 20x, compared to current methods of using pen and paper, while influencing behavior change via real-time communication and targeted outreach.
This Phase I project is a great opportunity to bring an innovative technology to help municipalities, and thereby the EPA, realize their environmental goals and educate residents and businesses about the benefits of improving the recycling system.
Summary/Accomplishments (Outputs/Outcomes):
In order to understand the nature of the problem jurisdictions were facing in complying with SB1383, we spoke with thirty jurisdictions, six consulting organizations and seven haulers in California between February and May 2023. We made sure we had a stratified sample across all the key attributes that enabled us to obtain a representative sample. For example, the interviewees ranged from small to large jurisdictions, urban to rural, located in Northern, Central and Southern California and from the coast to mid valley to the mountains. Some jurisdictions were hauling their own materials whereas others had franchise hauling agreements.
The jurisdictions that had already rolled out their organics collection programs were focused on reducing contamination in the most efficient way possible. And that, included a framework to (1) conduct contamination monitoring audits as per the regulation, (2) using the data to step up education and outreach efforts and, ultimately, (3) measure the effectiveness of their program.
After several followup meetings with key members in the waste management ecosystem, we identified a set of key requirements for a minimum viable product. This product would help jurisdictions not only comply with the legislative aspects of SB1383 but also go above and beyond in understanding behavioral patterns of generators and provide a framework to test different educational and financial interventions that would affect behavior change in the most efficient manner.
In addition to speaking to stakeholders in California, the Zabble team also managed to speak with six jurisdictions outside of California who also had similar cart tagging programs for recycling streams that were born out of a need to reduce contamination charges. With this additional research and recent news articles on more jurisdictions rolling out cart tagging programs, it has become clear that there is wider need for contamination monitoring solutions across the US.
Zabble’s product development team designed, developed, tested and successfully released a mobile-based bin tagging/contamination monitoring application as an extended version of its AI-powered Mobile Tagging™ platform within the performance period.
With this new mobile app-based platform, jurisdictions can upload get all their route information into the mobile platform, leverage the users’s current location to find the closest account and use Zabble’s computer vision AI technology to identify a bin’s fullness and contamination to create feedback loops with real-time notification or use aggregated insights for targeted outreach.
Conclusions:
The Zabble team has successfully completed the research, design, development, testing and release of its mobile-based bin tagging platform for jurisdictions, consultants and haulers to conduct contamination monitoring and track operations for targeted outreach and improving process efficiencies by 20x compared to existing methods of pen and paper or digital spreadsheets.
Initially, the area of focus was limited to jurisdictions in California complying with organics reduction legislation SB1383. However, several jurisdictions outside of California expressed interest in learning more about the project and shared experiences with their own cart tagging programs to reduce recycling contamination and generate cleaner material streams.
Overall, conversations with forty seven jurisdictions, haulers and consultants enabled the gathering of key insights that helped develop the technology and application to support jurisdictions.
As per the proposal put forth for this award, the Zabble team completed all of its tasks to validate the need for jurisdictions across the US to reduce contamination, boost landfill- diversion and increase participation rates with a platform that can provide the ability to track bin-level and route-level data to close the loop with targeted outreach and education.
Zabble has also been able to secure three pilots with key organizations who will also provide a letter of support for Zabble’s Phase II application for continued development of its platform for waste collection and outreach ecosystem.
With mounting tipping fees, increased contamination charges and new legislations being passed in multiple states to combat greenhouse gas emissions, AI-powered technology improvements can provide jurisdictions with the tools they need to effectively manage their zero waste programs.
By leveraging the well-oiled curriculum organized by George Washington University’s Office of Entrepreneurship via the Lean Startup Course at the beginning of the performance period, the Zabble team was able to secure twenty meetings with jurisdictions within a two week period to kickstart its information gathering process. Within the next two months, we were able to speak with forty seven jurisdictions, haulers and consultants across the US to evaluate their most pressing needs for contamination monitoring, reduction and outreach.
Through this customer discovery and validation process, we were able to not only identify key pain points in the journey of how and why jurisdictions conduct site visits and cart tagging inspections, but also design a solution using computer vision AI-powered technology, and implement and release a new product, all within six months.
The Zabble team also attended multiple conferences to showcase its existing products and test the need for an AI-powered contamination monitoring solution.
Our willingness to understand the pain points and bring forth a solution resulted in three pilots with two jurisdictions and a consulting organization.
SBIR Phase II:
AI-Based Bin Tagging Platform for Regulatory ComplianceThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.