Grantee Research Project Results

Final Report: AI-Based Bin Tagging Platform for Regulatory Compliance

EPA Contract Number: 68HERC24C0006
Title: AI-Based Bin Tagging Platform for Regulatory Compliance
Investigators:
Small Business:
EPA Contact:
Phase: II
Project Period: October 17, 2023 through October 16, 2025
RFA: Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II (2024) Recipients Lists
Research Category: Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)

Description:

California's ambitious Short-Lived Climate Pollutant Reduction Law (SB 1383) has established a high standard for implementing a closed-loop system to minimize organic waste in landfills. Organic waste, including food scraps, yard trimmings, and food-soiled paper, makes up approximately half of what Californians send to landfills, where it decomposes and emits 20% of the state's methane, a climate super pollutant significantly more potent than carbon dioxide.

The law established several key initiatives:

• Organic Waste Collection: Implement collection and recycling programs for organic waste from both residential and commercial sources.
• Edible Food Recovery: Create programs for grocery stores, restaurants, food distributors, venues, etc. to recover edible food via donations.
• Recycled Product Procurement: Mandate that jurisdictions purchase recycled organic products.
• Education and Outreach: Include requirements for Jurisdictions to conduct education and outreach on organics recycling for residents, businesses, haulers, solid waste facilities, food banks, and other food recovery organizations.
• Monitoring and Enforcement: Include requirements for food recovery inspections, commercial and multi-family site visits and contamination monitoring audits and enforcement guidance.

These eff orts are projected to significantly reduce the environmental impact of short-lived pollutants by achieving:

• A 75% decrease in the amount of organic waste disposed of in landfi lls by 2025 compared to 2014 levels.
• The recovery of at least 20% of currently disposed edible food for human consumption.

The goal of this Phase II award was to not only develop an effi cient tool for contamination monitoring audits to help jurisdictions, haulers and consultants comply with SB1383’s requirements, but to expand to other use cases such as cart tagging projects pioneered by The Recycling Partnership all across the United States. Furthermore, Zabble aimed to enhance its AI to identify a broader spectrum of contaminants and assess contamination levels besides improving its fl agship fullness detection models. The company also sought to introduce a cost-eff ective, fully customizable, and self-service solution for jurisdictions, haulers, and consultants, enabling seamless integration with diverse workfl ows involving commercial and multi-family site visits. Additionally, Zabble wanted to adapt its technology for truck cameras, facilitating real-time contaminant detection as materials are tipped into the truck's hopper. Zabble envisioned creating a closed loop ecosystem, where its technology also allowed for automated outreach, sending targeted mailers to generators to foster better recycling practices.

This Phase II award provided a valuable opportunity to introduce innovative AI-powered technology to establish a transparent and measurable method to capture data, educate residents and businesses and measure the eff ectiveness of policy to advance the U.S. recycling system and EPA’s mission of conserving natural resources.

Summary/Accomplishments (Outputs/Outcomes):

In Phase II, we initially spent our resources towards commercialization eff orts to validate our Phase I hypothesis that we were solving a real problem for cities in California. As soon as the performance period for Phase II began in October 2023, we scaled our sales and marketing eff orts by building a go-to-market plan for the next year and immediately following that up by posting ads in industry magazines and hiring a business development representative to connect with the target audience digitally and via in-person events. The initial results helped us acquire our fi rst 10 customers by the summer of 2024. Jurisdictions that had already rolled out their organics collection programs were immediately interested in complying with the container contamination minimization requirements of SB1383.

During this performance period, Zabble strategically expanded its team with key hires, bolstering customer success and advancing AI development. The company also grew its customer base, initially targeting California jurisdictions and later including haulers. Furthermore, Zabble extended its reach to cities outside California by adapting its workfl ows to monitor contamination.

Zabble achieved the following objectives as part of the Phase II award:

1. Developed a new complementary product called Mailers for targeted outreach to residents and businesses
2. Expanded the product use case to also track commercial and multi-family site visits for local and state-wide regulatory compliance (AB 341, AB 1826 and SB 1383)
3. Advanced Zabble’s real-time AI to identify 22 categories including bag colors (white/clear, black, blue and green), styrofoam and yard waste.
4. Developed an end-to-end software Integration with existing hopper cameras to identify contamination at the source
5. Changed our pricing model to accommodate diff erent types of projects

Conclusions:

The Zabble team successfully completed the research, design, development, testing, release and commercialization 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 effi ciencies by 2x compared to other software applications available in the market.

This included a framework for:

1. Conducting contamination monitoring audits as required by the regulation.
2. Utilizing the audit data to enhance education and outreach initiatives.
3. Assessing the overall eff ectiveness of their program in terms of participation and contamination.

In Phase II, the Zabble team scaled its eff orts in California to work with more jurisdictions and haulers complying with organics reduction legislation SB1383, while fi nding use cases for its application beyond California. Hundreds of conversations with jurisdictions, haulers, and consultants throughout the performance period provided key insights, which were instrumental in developing the supporting technology and application for jurisdictions. In line with the award proposal, the Zabble team successfully completed all tasks, confi rming the need for a platform in the U.S. to help track the implementation of policy that reduces contamination, increases landfi ll diversion, and boosts participation rates. The Zabble team maintained persistence outreach involving email and call follow ups, a strong presence at industry trade shows and was invited to speak at fi ve or more prestigious conferences annually. The Zabble team consistently engaged in direct outreach, maintained a signifi cant presence at industry trade shows, and received invitations to speak at a minimum of fi ve prestigious conferences each year. During the performance period, Zabble’s platform was adopted by haulers, jurisdictions and consultants to track contamination across forty six cities across the U.S.

To effectively manage zero-waste programs, AI-powered technology can be leveraged across the material value chain from disposal to hauling. This is especially relevant as cities confront increasing tipping fees, higher contamination charges, and the implementation of new Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation designed to reduce plastic and paper packaging pollution. Moving forward, monitoring these programs through focused data collection, targeted education and subsequent enforcement will be crucial.

SBIR Phase I:

AI-Based Bin Tagging Platform for Regulatory Compliance  | Final Report