Latest news with #WasteDive
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Amp grows focus on custom MSW sortation offerings
This story was originally published on Waste Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Waste Dive newsletter. Amp, known for its AI-powered sortation technology for recycling, is planning to expand one of its newer offerings: MSW processing. Amp has been 'quietly' ramping up its MSW diversion offerings for the last few years, namely through its Amp One sorting technology, said CEO Tim Stuart. Now, such MSW sorting offerings are a growing part of the company's portfolio, he said during an interview at WasteExpo in May. The Amp One system, designed to be co-located with landfills and transfer stations, can separate bagged trash into mixed recyclables, organics and residue streams. The ramp-up comes a few months after Amp announced it had raised $91 million in series D funding in an effort to accelerate Amp One system deployments. 'We're very confident that we can get maybe a half a dozen of these facilities going over the next three or four years,' he said. One such project is a partnership with the Southeastern Public Service Authority, which handles waste management for eight localities in the region of Portsmouth, Virginia. Amp was already operating a pilot facility there as a partnership with Recycling and Disposal Solutions. Portsmouth officials announced earlier this month that SPSA would partner with Amp to offer the MSW sorting services on a broader regional scale. Stuart estimates the existing Amp One system was processing 30,000 to 40,000 tons of MSW a year, but the new agreement with SPSA would process the authority's estimated 500,000 tons of MSW a year. SPSA solicited proposals last year for disposal diversion solutions due to the closure of the nearby WIN Waste Innovations waste-to-energy plant. At the height of operations, the plant diverted more than 70% of the region's trash from the landfill in nearby Suffolk, the Smithfield Times reported. At the time, the authority estimated that landfill would reach capacity by 2060 unless it pursued diversion options. Amp says it will achieve about a 50% diversion rate for SPSA's material. Amp will operate the facility at a certain per-ton processing rate, but SPSA will still own the material. Amp is in talks to install custom Amp One systems in a handful of other 'large municipalities' either through an RFP or pilot agreement, particularly in regions that have landfill constraints. Amp also plans to work with private haulers that don't internalize their own material, he said. 'There's a ton of municipalities that want more diversion. They want a longer life on their landfills, so this is meant to be good for the environment and good for the economics of things,' he said. 'It's an important component of the business, because by attacking MSW, it's just another way to recycle.' Recommended Reading Waste Connections to build its first MRF in Colorado in partnership with AMP
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Jon Vander Ark: AI is ‘wildly oversold,' but it can provide benefits
This story was originally published on Waste Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Waste Dive newsletter. Over the course of a few years, Republic Services is spending more than a billion dollars in capital investments and operational expenditures on digital solutions, CEO Jon Vander Ark said at WasteExpo's Investor Summit on May 5. He said that's giving the company a leg up. "That is a scale difference and scale benefit that only a small number of players can just physically do given the size of their business and scale of their business," Vander Ark said. "We're going to make it effortless to do business with us." New technologies fueled by robotics and artificial intelligence have reshaped certain aspects of the waste and recycling industry in recent years, including in MRFs and increasingly along collection routes. But executives have to be clear-eyed about which technologies are overhyped and which can deliver measurable returns on investment, Vander Ark said. He compared the current boom in AI investment to the "dot-com era" of the late 1990s. He noted that many companies that chased a digital footprint suffered in the 2000 market contraction, but the push to bring brands online "had tremendous and profound impact" more than 20 years later. "I think AI is on a very similar path,' Vander Ark said. "I'm not a huge AI person in the sense of, I think it is wildly oversold in terms of the timing of the impact." For a vertically integrated waste company like Republic, though, there are select applications that Vander Ark sees as beneficial to the bottom line. He said the company is currently looking at taking out repetitive back-office tasks and replacing some human customer service work with AI. Republic has also been investing heavily in digital efficiencies for its fleet. The company has nearly completed an initiative to put tablets in the cabin of each hauling vehicle connected to its "RISE" dispatch platform. On the company's Q4 2024 earnings call, executives reported RISE had generated more than $60 million in revenue in its first year of operation. The company's adoption of the MPower system, which would automate fleet maintenance tracking, is also expected to save another $20 million in revenue annually once fully online by the end of 2025. At the Investor Summit, CFO Brian DelGhiaccio said that Republic could save $5 million per year for every one minute saved across its fleet's routes. Republic has advised it can achieve another $30 million in savings through its digital initiatives, but Vander Ark said that's a conservative estimate. With AI, he anticipates further savings through route optimization. For instance, he noted large container routes typically require picking up waste from a customer, going to a landfill or transfer station, and then going back out. But there may be ways to use AI to create "point-to-point-to-point" routes that are more efficient and take out legs of a vehicle's journey, he noted. Executives also said drivers are in favor of identifying more route efficiencies. "They want that information at their fingertips. They don't want to experience the inefficiencies of, let's say, a traffic jam," DelGhiaccio said. "They'd rather know about that in advance and reroute to make sure that they can be more efficient and get home quicker to their family and finish their routes." Vander Ark was also bearish on the prospect of autonomous hauling vehicles removing the need for drivers, saying that was likely still 50 years away. He said that was because drivers today aren't just maneuvering the vehicle but are overseeing a complex series of tasks. Larson Richardson, senior vice president of operations, said technology in fleets "doesn't replace the need for leadership from an individual." "Technology enables them to have autonomy over their route, but there's certainly elements in their route that requires the athlete behind the steering wheel of the truck to operate in an efficient and effective way," he added. Recommended Reading Republic posts strong start to year amid ambiguity around credits, tariffs Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
WM President John Morris on AI, autonomous equipment and tech investments
This story was originally published on Waste Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Waste Dive newsletter. WM President and Chief Operating Officer John Morris remembers driving his first waste vehicles in college, a time when riding on the back of the truck was standard and 'the only air conditioning was rolling the windows down.' Today, Morris oversees field operations for the company, which has a fleet of over 18,000 collection vehicles and a suite of technologies to make those vehicles safer and more efficient. 'The technology that's in these trucks is light years ahead of where it was,' he said. Morris was appointed president of WM last week. He'll continue his field operations role, and multiple executives, including those leading sustainability, customer experience and enterprise strategy, will now report to him. Morris has previously served as market area general manager of New York City, area vice president of the greater Mid-Atlantic Area, chief strategy officer, and senior vice president of field operations. Morris says the company has been strategic about how it adopts and rolls out the latest tech upgrades. The industry struggles to retain labor, he said, and the right investments are helping WM become less labor dependent. At the same time, it also provides opportunities to retain employees by providing vehicles and facilities that are safer and more comfortable than before. 'When we buy more expensive, sophisticated trucks, it costs more to maintain them, but the overall benefit to the business is something we're comfortable with,' he said. 'First and foremost, I want to be safe. But we're also in business to be profitable, not just efficient.' Morris sat down with Waste Dive on May 6, during WasteExpo in Las Vegas, to discuss how WM is adding AI upgrades to its existing technology, improving on longtime cab technology and piloting new programs for heavy equipment operators. He also discussed pilot programs for using autonomous vehicle technology at landfills. WM CEO Jim Fish has previously called for a 'significant percentage' of WM's heavy equipment fleet be autonomous by 2030. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. JOHN MORRIS: AI is helping inform the business better and helping us operate more efficiently. We've had forms of artificial intelligence in the business for probably eight or 10 years. If you go into our recycling facilities, what was once a manual sorting role has been automated over the years. When you look at those optical sorters, that is a form of artificial intelligence. It's reading the material and sorting without us ever having to touch it. AI is also helping us from a safety perspective to avoid things like repetitive motion injuries, as well as from an efficiency standpoint. When you look inside some of our cabs, it's interesting to see why [we first adopted AI-assisted technology in trucks]. We had a very prohibitive labor agreement on the West Coast [about 15 years ago], and we were having a problem with our drivers taking pictures if the cans were overloaded. They were supposed to take a picture and send it to a mailbox so we could send the sales rep out [to talk to the customer.] We could not get folks in that particular labor union under that labor agreement to take pictures. We started looking for ways to augment what they wouldn't do by using technology. What that has morphed into is now every one of our commercial front-load trucks gets still or video images of every transaction. When we service a container, we can see what's happening as we're going into the container, both the outside and what's inside, and we have cameras on the hopper. We probably pick up about 700 million yards a year of commercial material. That gets us data on every one of those transactions, so you really start to understand customer behavior to see what's working, not working, or you can address safety issues. Virtually none of those images are processed by a person. There's still a human in the loop, but it's more of a [quality control] thing. We have a team in India, and if we have to send [an image] to somebody in operations or sales, that information will come back overnight, so there's a lot of power in that. The other area where I've been thrilled with the progress we're making is really from a safety perspective. We were an early adopter of Lytx [a fleet management and telematics technology]. We have that technology in every one of our collection vehicles and all our supervisory vehicles. We've been using artificial intelligence and recognition technology to be able to identify [potentially unsafe driving behavior]. That information, gathered through AI, is coaching people in a positive way, as opposed to disciplining them. It's so hard to hire drivers. So when we look at that technology, we see a coaching opportunity and a development opportunity. You can sit down with one of your drivers and say, 'Hey, listen, here's what we've been noticing about your behavior. You should be following at three seconds, because if you don't, you're 40% more likely to have a collision.' We've had routing engineers and different forms of routing software. Everybody in the industry has for a lot of years, but there was really never a software program that was built specifically for the waste industry. With the number of transactions we do a year, certainly, we want to make sure that our folks are efficient. We also found that when you have 'routine breakers,' meaning you have to deviate from a schedule for some reason, the risk of having an incident goes up. We run about 4,000 industrial roll-off routes. How we route on Monday is entirely different on Tuesday. So there's a dynamic nature in that industrial line of business that's unique — more so than commercial, and certainly more so than residential. We saw the opportunity to build out an [industrial] routing technology through our internal ops research team. The key is that it's dynamic. There are about 72 attributes that go into making a decision on how to service an industrial roll-off container, things like container type, truck type, disposal type, location. We just made another improvement that we're rolling out. We've had tablets in our trucks and onboard computers for over a decade, but when you pull up to a container, drivers have to [interact with the screen multiple times]. What we're trying to do is find ways to make the technology passive. … We want them to focus on safely servicing their customers and not get distracted. So we went back with our software engineers and reworked it so that now we'll use the latitude and longitude of the truck and actuators on the arms to be able to automatically confirm that we've serviced the container. I often talk about total cost of operation. [For example,] we have more sophisticated trucks now, with a lot more technology, so they're going to be more expensive to maintain. I'm more interested in knowing the total cost of operation. We can look at how we allocate dollars on capital, and what we've been cautious about is making sure that we're not putting technology in for technology's sake. When you talk about AI, it means 50 different things to 50 different people. I talk about it in terms of, how are we going to use technology broadly to modernize our business model and structurally get our cost down? Even though the pressure on the labor market has eased from where it was a few years ago, I think over the long term, if you sort of follow the math, those labor scarcity issues are going to persist. I sit on the board of the National Association of Manufacturers, and there are stats [from that business sector] that say in the next five years we're going to need 4 million folks to fill manufacturing jobs. We'll be lucky to get half of them. There's something we are piloting right now [in Arizona and in the Pacific Northwest]. We've done some work with some heavy equipment folks on remote control operations. If you have a facility in the middle of nowhere, a very hard-to-access place, it's gonna be hard to get labor. However, maybe you can put someone in a chair in what looks like a gaming room, they can run the equipment from anywhere. That certainly is going to help from a labor perspective. An example could be automating operations like [loading dirt at a landfill]. Heavy equipment is probably a near-term application for those reasons. I could see an application where we might be able to do some form of autonomous movement of long-haul waste. But are we right around the corner from having a fully autonomous refuse vehicle running through neighborhoods and school zones? I think that [will take longer]. As far as labor training, we've had training centers for years, and we train about 85 to 90 drivers every week and about 15 to 20 technicians every week. We are just now rolling out the [program] for heavy equipment operators. Our training facility in Florida is on a closed landfill, so it's an ideal spot for heavy equipment operators. We are going to continue having labor scarcity and facing the cost of labor, and we continue looking to the advancement of technology [to help] outstrip that labor pressure. At the same time, everybody in the industry is trying to figure out how to hang on to their employees. Recommended Reading WM says tariffs unlikely to affect RNG, MRF plans for 2025 Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Hydrogen-fueled refuse trucks are ‘just a matter of when,' manufacturers say
This story was originally published on Waste Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Waste Dive newsletter. Truck manufacturers still see a future for hydrogen-powered refuse vehicles despite the recent dissolution of Hyzon, which ran the first U.S. pilot for such vehicles last year. Manufacturers think waste and recycling haulers are a natural fit for the technology, given their proven ability in recent years to pivot to new fuel types like compressed natural gas. "This industry works very well at adapting to infrastructure," Tyler Ohlmansiek, director of e-mobility sales at Mack Trucks, said during a panel at WasteExpo on May 7. "That's a leg up for hydrogen in the waste and recycling space." Hyzon partnered with manufacturer New Way Trucks to deliver the first hydrogen fuel cell-powered refuse hauling vehicle in 2024, and it had begun receiving orders for the model. Recology, GreenWaste and other waste companies conducted pilots of the truck, and found that it was performing as well as diesel-powered trucks in certain applications. That early success wasn't enough to keep Hyzon afloat, however. Its board of directors voted to liquidate and dissolve the company in December, and an auction for its assets remains ongoing. Despite Hyzon's demise, New Way has still received interest in hydrogen fuel cell refuse trucks and is evaluating ways to continue in the space, said Marc de Smidt, senior director of engineering at New Way. That may include partnering with an entity that takes over the defunct company's assets or partnering with another fuel cell manufacturer. "We're working on getting something out there," de Smidt said. Other manufacturers are dipping their toe into the space as well, though mostly for heavy-duty applications beyond waste and recycling hauling. Kenworth was set to begin production this year on a hydrogen fuel cell truck jointly developed by Paccar and Toyota, but that's now delayed. Hyundai has been manufacturing a heavy-duty hydrogen fuel cell vehicle for several years, and recently debuted an updated model at the Advanced Clean Transportation Expo in California. Volvo Group and Daimler also plan to bring a hydrogen fuel cell truck to market this decade through a partnership. Hydrogen fuel cell-powered trucks face a shifting policy landscape, as the Trump administration has attempted to cut funding for a hydrogen research hub program created during the Biden administration. Critics have also attempted to repeal the Advanced Clean Trucks rule, first created by California and later adopted by other states. They say the rule's timeline to transition manufacturers away from fossil fuel-powered vehicles is aggressive and unrealistic given the availability and performance of alternatives. Nevertheless, manufacturers are still eager to make hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles work, in part because sustainability-minded customers are demanding them, said Mitesh Naik, director of product planning and strategy for Peterbilt Motors, a subsidiary of Paccar. 'Despite what happens with regulations, I know two things. Number one: We'll be ready. ... And number two: There's still a lot of ESG-minded customers,' said Naik. 'It's not a matter of if, it's just a matter of when.' The sector's adoption of battery-electric vehicles has also been growing, albeit slowly. Last year, 19 new battery-electric refuse vehicles were registered, according to an industry-sponsored report. That number is expected to grow, in part becauselast year Republic Services ordered 100 electric McNeilus Volterra waste and recycling vehicles from Oshkosh Corp. Proponents of hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles note the technology can be lighter than the battery packs needed for battery electric-powered heavy-duty vehicles. That means hydrogen trucks may be a better drop-in replacement for diesel trucks on more hauling routes. One of the key challenges to wider hydrogen truck adoption will be fueling infrastructure, panelists said. As fleets evolve, operators will have to decide where and how they deploy permanent hydrogen fueling stations, often working with third-party partners. In some cases, fleet operators could position a hydrogen fuel tank on their lots. That could be a quicker interim move to transition fleets, especially given the delays with gas and power utility interconnections that have caused setbacks for other fuel types, said Peterbilt's Naik. "OEMs can very quickly produce a truck, deliver a truck to a great partner and customer. But oftentimes the infrastructure is the missing item," he said. Jim Mendoza, director of equipment, procurement and maintenance for Recology, said haulers are looking for a "one-to-one" replacement for diesel-powered trucks, but "the reality is we may not get to one-to-one." Instead, he envisions a mixed fleet with some hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles, some battery-electric and some internal combustion-powered trucks. Even so, Mendoza said there are potential upsides beyond the emissions savings touted by proponents of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. He said the trucks could also be a recruitment tool for haulers, noting Recology drivers didn't go home smelling like exhaust after the hydrogen fuel cell pilot, making the job more pleasant. "We don't have that influx of drivers anymore. We have to go shop for them and it's very difficult," Mendoza said. "This is maybe a good story for them.' Disclosure: Informa, which owns a controlling stake in Informa TechTarget, the publisher behind Waste Dive, is also the owner of WasteExpo. Informa has no influence over Waste Dive's coverage. Recommended Reading Hyzon lays off workers, plans to liquidate business Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Biogas market awaits RFS guidance; plus RNG news from WM, Viridi, Vision
This story was originally published on Waste Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Waste Dive newsletter. This is the latest installment in Waste Dive's Biogas Monthly series. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has set out a busy regulatory (or deregulatory) agenda over the first 100 days of President Donald Trump's term, but one regulation he's left untouched is the Renewable Fuel Standard. The regulation sets a certain amount of non-petroleum fuel credits that refiners and importers of petroleum-based fuels must acquire in a given year, which plays an important role in creating demand for the fuels. The U.S. EPA initially set those levels, known as Renewable Volume Obligations, annually, but it chose to set the targets for three years in 2023. With those targets set to expire at the end of this year, many fuel producers are wondering how aggressive the Trump administration will be for the next round of RVOs. The EPA is already overdue to set those targets, and the market for renewable fuels is slumping amid the uncertainty. That's in part because the Biden EPA floated the possibility of a waiver for obligated parties that didn't hit their targets last year, said Adam Schubert, a senior associate at Stillwater Associates. That proposal is now in the hands of the Trump administration. The waiver would apply to 2024 targets, and it's looking like the market may need another waiver again this year as production lags behind demand. But no one in the fuels industry quite knows what to expect, according to Schubert. 'For producers, they don't know what the volume is. For buyers, it gives them an incentive not to buy. That creates a bad incentive,' he said. 'The market's still trying to figure out 2024 and 2025 while waiting for 2026 to come out.' Prices for RINs, the credits generated by alternative fuel producers, have been trading lower since late last year, hurting the incentive. Schubert said there are also structural aspects of the transportation fuel credit market that will be hard for the EPA to solve. Namely, many of the fleets that can run on compressed natural gas and buy RNG already do. In order for there to be more demand for these fuels, more CNG-powered fleets would need to come online. But those fleets have typically come about through state-level incentives like in California, and most regulators today are looking to facilitate a transition toward electric rather than CNG. There are several paths forward: New CNG-powered engines are entering the market with longer range that might entice more fleet owners to switch. More states could allow for a switch to CNG-powered vehicles amid attacks on clean trucks mandates. Or, the EPA could take another look at eRINs, the controversial proposal that would create a credit for renewable electricity used to power vehicles.
