The English city of Sunderland is piloting a number of 5G enhanced Smart City technologies, including ‘smart compactor bins’. The trials are the result of a smart city infrastructure that is being developed across the city and neighbouring towns, including Washington.

The trial period, during which a number of smart bins were installed across the city, has been in place across the summer and continues throughout September.

Smart bins are part of a series of smart technology-enabled enhancements that the council is exploring in partnership with BAI Communications (BAI). It comes after Sunderland City Council and BAI signed an agreement with the University of Sunderland to build a 5G test lab to provide for IoT testing. Further IoT pilots that will be rolled out in future include water monitoring, smart life buoys, a Wi-Fi messaging platform and interactive play parks.

The smart bins contain a solar powered ram that compacts the waste inside, enabling each bin to store up to five times more waste than an equivalent size standard bin. Each smart compactor bin uses a regular household wheelie bin to contain the compacted material inside, making them ideal for the council’s teams to empty using existing equipment.

The sensors within each bin constantly report on the quantity of waste inside them, informing the council’s environmental services team remotely and instantly how often they are being used, and the optimum time to empty them.

The bins employ small sensors and cellular transmission to communicate usage and other useful data. The devices can be retrofitted to upgrade existing commercial or public bins across the city.

Liz St Louis, director of Smart Cities at Sunderland City Council, said: “We know that technology has the capability to deliver advancements across health, education and more, including our own council services, enabling us to deliver a continuously improving offer to residents, businesses and visitors to the city. In our digitally connected, smart city, it is great to see our ambitious plans coming to fruition. Many pilots, such as the smart bin trial, are helping us to make better, data-informed and more sustainable decisions.”

Andy Wilson, Environmental Services manager at Sunderland City Council, added: “The introduction of smart bins and associated technologies has the potential to enhance a modern intelligent waste management system, which in turn can contribute to wider sustainability goals within our low carbon action plan.

“The smart bins don’t need to be emptied as often, which is not only great for the city’s carbon footprint, but also represents considerable fuel savings too with the added benefit that the time saved helps to enable staff to focus on other duties and enhancement work.”