Empathizing with Waste Collection Servicemen
In our series of blog posts called Waste Labs Insights, I, Vladimir Chuchkin, the CEO of Waste Labs, am sharing with you some of the lessons we learned from our client engagements in Waste Management in 2020.
Every morning, as I send my younger ones to school, we like to wave to the waste truck servicing our condo (@Colex — Thank you guys!). The drivers are clearly happy to wave back at us — sadly, they are often invisible to the community they serve. We take the waste collection for granted, but behind the scenes, there are lots of things that define the quality and even availability of the critical service of waste collection.
When starting the collection in a new area, each service provider encounters three fundamental pressures that will define their cost and operational models:
1. People’s behaviour, habits and attitudes towards waste
While citizens in one country have already been used to separating the waste at their household and will even chase a waste truck to discard a pack of nicely tied cardboard boxes, in some other parts of the world people expect their trash bags to be collected on the curb.
For waste collectors, it could significantly alter the number of vehicles and workforce needed for collection, facilities to segregate, and areas to discharge the waste.
2. Regulation and local norms
Differences are also driven by the government’s programs and policies in handling its waste collection and utilisation. But a focus on Sustainability usually comes at a higher price.
For instance, in Singapore, the government expects public waste to be partially collected by EV (electric vehicles). In Australia, waste separation rules vary significantly in different council areas; hence, expectations and protocols would be different in each district.
Waste collectors that work in multiple countries need to adapt to these differences to collect waste and cope with the local requirements efficiently.
3. State of economic development
In the developing countries, where some areas may not have proper roads, companies need to operate smaller tricycles to carry waste to the collection hubs (transfer stations).
In more advanced countries like Australia, roads are not an issue, but waste trucks may need to cover much longer distances to serve the area. In Singapore, automation is preferred over labour to handle the waste. That means that waste collectors need to invest more in new technologies and infrastructure.
These are some of the critical factors to be considered by the Sales and Operations teams of Waste Collection companies that are looking to serve new markets or territories.
Once they start the collection project, other variable elements need to be taken into account:
- Spending less when launching a new collection system. This could manifest as buying fewer trucks and using fewer resources to get the job done.
- Ensuring that promised service quality standards are met by the company and that citizens are satisfied with the service (and kids keep waiving).
- Looking to minimize carbon footprint and contribute to the Sustainability of the community.
- Cross-selling to more customers to increase the profitability of the anchor business.
- Lastly, the hardest one — balancing costs and revenues by better-utilising the fleet and workforce, as well as keeping collection schedules consistent, and routes short and optimal.
So while being mostly invisible, the waste management fleet resembles a small but mighty army with a noble mission of cleaning our city from waste. An army that operates hundreds of vehicles employs thousands of people, and services hundreds of thousands of bins of our waste every day. An army that innovates and adjusts to our habits.
And as unromantic as Waste Management may seem, I am happy that our company is part of it.
