The 2017 Consumer Electronics Show came with its share of Internet of Things devices. Smart washing machines, coffee makers, air fryers, and even internet-connected toasters were on display. But Laurent Canneva noticed one glaring omission: There were no smart trash cans.
And collecting data from trash receptacles, Canneva realized, could solve a genuine problem: Organizations don’t have an accurate way to measure how much trash they produce. Trash output from an office building, for instance, can typically only be measured in very rough terms—by the truckload or the dumpsterful. That can make it hard for organizations to track waste data for sustainability reports or to earn zero-waste certification.
Canneva and his friend, engineer Laurent Meunier, founded Spare-It to address this problem. Spare-It’s system consists of smart scales, sensors, and cameras installed below and inside trash and recycling bins that continually upload waste data to an online platform. Weights from the scales let organizations know how much trash people are throwing away in pounds or kilograms. Canneva is now CEO of the company.
How Spare-It is using AI to solve a novel problem can be a useful guide for CFOs looking to incorporate technology into their processes.
Sorting it out. AI within the platform analyzes data from the sensors to recognize more than 100 types of objects and identify “contamination”—nonrecyclable items placed in recycling bins, which can clog the machinery at recycling facilities. (About 25% of the recycling in the US is “contaminated.”) Spare-It data, Canneva said, can be integrated with organizations’ existing sustainability or building management systems.
Organizations can use this data to get greener while saving money. For instance, Canneva said, one of Spare-It’s clients is a landlord for seven buildings with an occupancy of 4,000. For years the company provided tenants deskside waste bins that were emptied twice a day. Spare-It’s data showed them that 90% of those bins were less than 10% full when they were emptied. The company reduced the amount of waste bins it used by 90%, saving money and labor.
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Showing employees their waste data can also spark positive change, Canneva said. Spare-It’s system is granular enough to track waste data by floor and even by individual receptacle. Some clients track this information on leaderboards and hold informal competitions between floors or departments to see which one can recycle the most. Boston University, one of Spare-It’s clients, shows its waste data in elevators and interactive wall displays in its landmark Center for Computing and Data Sciences (popularly known as the “Jenga building”).
These social nudges can be surprisingly effective. Spare-It’s customers, which include consulting firms, e-commerce companies, and global financial institutions, send an average of 18% less waste to landfills per year, Canneva said. Some of its best customers recycle or compost 90% of their waste, sending only 10% to landfills or incinerators, he said.
Looking ahead. Spare-It recently received a $4 million investment from France’s Credit Mutuel Equity and other investors. The company will use the capital to double its staff, ideally going from 14 employees to 28 by the end of the year, Canneva said. Some of the new employees will be data scientists who will train Spare-It’s AI to recognize more items and make its model more predictive, he said. Other hires will focus on sales and marketing.
Canneva, who left a career in Big Pharma to run Spare-It, is proud to help solve the problem of waste. “We are generating too much waste,” he said. With the necessary data, he said, “we can understand it, we can visualize it, and we can manage it.”
“What we are trying to achieve here is not to be perfect” or to have zero waste, he said, “but just to leverage data so that together we learn how to do a little bit better every day.”