A sensor network that shows you exactly which bins need emptying, proves every collection, and lets residents flag problems with a tap. Fewer wasted miles, lower cost, and measurably cleaner, lower-carbon streets.
This is the operations view your duty officer opens at 06:00. Bins reporting themselves in real time, the day's collection round drawn around only the bins that need lifting, and a live read on miles, carbon and resident reports already in.
Drawn here in the abstract – a typical inner-London ward, the Thames at the bottom, a high street through the middle, and 18 monitored bins doing the talking.
Today most rounds run to a fixed schedule whether a bin is empty or overflowing. That wastes fuel, crew time and vehicle life, and it shows on the street. Here is where it bites.
Fuel, HGV wear and crew hours are spent visiting bins that did not need emptying – at a time when every line of the budget is under pressure and driver shortages make each wasted mile more costly.
Most UK councils have declared a climate emergency and set net zero targets, many for 2030. Rotting waste gives off methane and collection fleets burn diesel – fewer, smarter trips cut emissions you directly control.
Overflowing street bins, missed collections and fly-tipping hotspots are exactly what residents see and complain about – and what undermines a clean, green reputation.
Not a box of gadgets from five vendors. A single, council-owned network and software stack designed so the data turns straight into action and savings.
Rugged RAK Wireless gateways give long-range, low-power coverage across the borough. The network is yours: no per-device SIMs, no mobile data bills, and signal that reaches on-street, underground and estate bins alike.
Council-owned infrastructureSonar measures fill level in real time, while an accelerometer logs the exact time and date each bin is lifted and emptied. Sealed, tamper-resistant, years of battery life, and fits almost any container – no mains power, no Wi-Fi.
Fill level + verified liftA code on the side turns residents into your eyes on the ground. A quick scan reports "overflowing", "damaged" or "fly-tipping here" with the location attached, straight onto the dashboard – no app to download.
Resident reportingCrews get optimised routes that skip empty bins and prioritise the full ones, with live re-routing through the day. Proof-of-collection is captured automatically – the round adapts to reality instead of repeating a fixed loop.
Optimised collectionsOne screen for fill levels, collections made, missed bins, resident reports, response times and carbon saved. Officer and member views show the borough at a glance and prove service levels with hard data.
Evidence & transparencySensors send fill level and lift events over the borough's own LoRaWAN, and residents add real-time reports by QR.
Only bins that genuinely need attention enter the round, and the route is optimised around them automatically.
The driver tablet guides the most efficient run, re-routing live as new alerts and reports come in.
The accelerometer confirms each emptying with a timestamp, so service levels are evidenced, not assumed.
Self-powered sensors on a council-owned network mean simple installation and no recurring connectivity bills per bin.
Sonar gives an accurate, live read of how full each bin is, so you act on need rather than a guess or a habit.
Each lift is timestamped by the accelerometer. End "we were never collected" disputes and evidence SLAs with data.
QR reporting on every bin gives the public a one-tap way to flag overflow, damage and fly-tipping, with the location attached.
The driver app builds the shortest effective round each day and re-routes live, cutting miles, fuel and time at the wheel.
Cost, miles, carbon, missed collections and resident response times in one place – ready for cabinet, scrutiny or a funder.
Add a temperature sensor to flag bins running hot before they ignite – an answer to the rising risk of discarded vapes and lithium batteries causing bin and vehicle fires.
Compare general and recycling usage across wards and over time to target communications and shape policy with real evidence.
The figures below are drawn from comparable UK and European deployments. We baseline your area first, then measure against it, so the savings claimed end up being your own.
A comparable south-coast UK borough reported around a 52% reduction in waste collection costs after moving to fill-level-led rounds. A major city programme of 3,000+ sensors recorded payback inside a year.
Skipping empty bins cuts vehicle miles, fuel and CO₂ directly – progress you control toward your net zero targets, reported in a format ready for your climate scorecard.
Acting before bins overflow keeps litter out of parks, waterways and estates, and QR reporting closes the loop with residents faster.
Smart routing helps absorb driver shortages and rising demand on stretched rounds – one industrial deployment cut a site's labour need from seven roles to four.
Once the borough owns a LoRaWAN network, it is not just for bins. The same infrastructure becomes the backbone for a genuinely smart borough – each new use case riding for almost nothing on top of what bins already paid for.
With flooding and fire risks rising in many areas, watching gullies, water levels and bin temperatures on the same network is an obvious next step.
Designed for the way London boroughs actually decide and account for service investments – measured baseline against live, evidence ready for cabinet, scrutiny and the Mayor's climate reporting, and a template the next borough can pick up.
A phased, low-risk pilot in one town centre and one estate. Run it alongside existing rounds, gather the evidence, then take a borough-wide business case to cabinet.
Agree the pilot area, map bins, and capture today's costs, miles and complaint data as the baseline.
Install gateways and a starter set of sensors, fit QR codes, and stand up the driver app and dashboard.
Switch to dynamic routing, open resident reporting, and report savings and carbon against the baseline.
Borough-wide roll-out plan, plus a costed route to extend the network to new smart-borough use cases.
BinSense comes from the team behind i-Site, an operations and contract-management platform already used to run sensor-driven services in the field. We already use IoT sensors to manage consumables on the ground – replenished by real need rather than guesswork – and we live in dashboards, KPIs and proof-of-service every day.
That matters because the hard part of smart bins is not the hardware. It is turning a stream of readings into routes crews trust, savings finance can sign off, and evidence a committee or a funder will accept. That is exactly the gap we close.
Rostering, routing, KPIs, invoicing and client-facing dashboards already running in live service contracts.
Sensors managing real assets today, with alert thresholds, exception handling and service-level reporting built in.
Network, hardware, app and dashboard from one team – no stitching together vendors who blame each other.
A 20-minute demo on a live dashboard, and a one-page pilot proposal sized for your network and your bins. No obligation.
20 minutes, no pitch deck. We'll walk through a live dashboard, talk through your collection picture, and tell you honestly whether it's a fit.
We'll be in touch from a real human within one working day. If it's urgent, drop us a line at pilot@binsense.co.uk.