Cascais has 140 smart waste bins that run on solar energy

The town of Cascais has 140 smart waste bins that help reduce the ecological footprint of the collection and cleaning operation. The City Council has relaunched this initiative with a new image, under the motto “Leave the trash with me, create a good environment”, thus expanding the territory’s coverage and becoming the municipality with the largest number of this type of equipment.

These bins run on solar energy, thanks to a panel installed on top of them, and have greater compaction and storage capacity that reduces collection needs by about eight times.

As the local authority explains in a press release, “the communication of the filling levels of each smart bin with Cascais Ambiente’s data center [empresa pública que gere a limpeza urbana no território] makes the emptying operations only occur when the maximum waste storage capacity is almost reached”, optimizing productivity.

In 2018, the project started with the installation of 10 equipments in the most tourist areas of Cascais, but since then it has proven to improve the efficiency and management of urban cleaning and public space, and has therefore expanded to 46 equipments by 2021.

According to the Chairman of the Board of Cascais Environment Luís Almeida Capãothe municipality aims to “promote efficiency, comfort of use and to optimize our response capacity in times of high affluence, such as events or holidays,” instilling in citizens and visitors the need to dispose of small waste, such as food packaging, balloons, cigarette butts, tobacco filters, napkins and paper cups.

All smart garbage cans also have a QR Code directed to a short satisfaction survey, thus allowing to analyze the impact of the equipment in the perception of the citizens about urban cleaning, encouraging them to be part of the solution.