Waste management has become a major strategic challenge, where environmental, regulatory, and economic imperatives converge. Manual methods, still widely used, slow down operations, waste money, and are often environmentally unfriendly. The solution to adopting responsible practices? Digitize your waste management!
By automating tasks and providing real-time visibility, digital tools not only optimize collection and processing but also reduce your carbon footprint.
Discover in this article how to embrace this transition and transform your company towards more efficient and sustainable waste management.
What is waste management?
Waste management is a methodology aimed at minimizing a company’s environmental impact by creating a virtuous value chain around residual material flows. This structured process encompasses all actions related to waste management within a building. From installing suitable disposal systems in common areas (cafeterias, offices, restrooms, etc.) to optimizing waste collection, each type of waste is handled with a specific treatment approach.
Waste management is built around three fundamental concepts: the waste hierarchy, circular economy, and extended producer responsibility. To optimize it, companies must follow a tiered treatment methodology: prevention, source reduction, reuse, recycling, energy recovery, and disposal. This approach transforms waste into a potential source of economic value and helps reduce disposal costs. Beyond the financial aspects, this method plays a vital role in an organization’s CSR strategy and serves as a strong indicator of corporate culture.
What are the challenges of waste management?
Waste management presents several challenges for companies, both operational and environmental:
- Controlling operating costs:
With the implementation of automatic weighing systems that quantify volumes by waste type, interventions are adjusted based on actual needs.
- Compliance with environmental regulations:
This data not only serves as the foundation for regulatory reporting but also acts as performance indicators for reduction and recovery audits. - Evolving towards sustainable practices: Operational deployment begins with a precise mapping of waste flows, identifying production points (workspaces, cafeterias, restrooms, etc.). This detailed analysis allows for the design of tailored selective collection systems, with ergonomic signage that facilitates sorting by users.
Digital technologies now play a crucial role in this optimization. Smart sensor systems measure the real-time fill levels of containers and standardize the traceability of interventions. Waste management thus becomes a true lever for performance.
What if you took the next step by digitalizing your waste management?
Why digitalize waste management?
Optimization of your operations, reduced carbon footprint, ensuring your company’s compliance… The benefits of digitalized waste management are numerous:
- Improved traceability:
Thanks to digital platforms, every step of waste management is recorded in real time. This ensures complete traceability and makes it easier to access data to demonstrate compliance with current regulations. - Cost optimization: Digitalization helps identify sources of waste and optimize processes, reducing treatment, transportation, and storage costs. Your agents act only when and where necessary.
- Facilitation of regulatory compliance: Digital tools help centralize information and compliance evidence, which is crucial for meeting regulatory requirements. Digitalization also simplifies updating practices in line with new regulations.
- Real-time visibility: With digital tools, you can access information in real time and monitor key performance indicators. This allows for increased responsiveness to adjust actions and achieve your set goals.
Tools to digitalize your waste management
Digitalizing waste management can be complex, but once implemented, it becomes essential. To successfully make this transition, it is crucial to equip your company with the right digital tools. The integration of connected devices and digital solutions allows you to innovate, making the process more efficient, traceable, and sustainable.
1. Connected devices
Imagine bins that never overflow, recycling bins always ready to be used, and optimized waste management all thanks to connected devices. A solution that revolutionizes the monitoring of your facilities. But concretely, what devices are available and how does it work?
Occupancy sensors
These are discreet sensors installed in restrooms, meeting rooms, or cafeterias that measure the real-time occupancy of these spaces. Thanks to this technology, your cleaning interventions no longer follow a strict schedule but adapt intelligently to actual foot traffic. For example, a cleaning is automatically triggered after a certain number of visits to a highly frequented restroom.
This approach ensures that spaces are always clean and welcoming, providing an impeccable experience for both your employees and visitors. By adjusting interventions based on traffic, you maintain a healthy and pleasant environment at all times.
Fill-level sensors
Fill-level sensors, installed on equipment such as your trash bins or soap and paper dispensers, revolutionize cleanliness management in your spaces. By monitoring fill levels in real time, these devices alert you as soon as a bin is full or a dispenser starts running low. This allows you to intervene promptly before a problem occurs. As a result, your teams focus solely on the equipment that requires attention, thanks to the sensors.
Connected bins
2. Digital solutions
The use of software and platforms complements waste management by centralizing and analyzing data collected by sensors.
Management platforms
Imagine a digital solution that simplifies and optimizes your waste management without the need for your intervention… Thanks to management platforms, you get a real-time overview of collection points, with precise data on fill levels and specific needs. This allows you to proactively plan your interventions, reduce unnecessary trips, and maximize team efficiency.
The platform also provides detailed analytics to improve performance and adjust your practices. Data is your best ally. Imagine a dashboard that shows you your collected waste volumes, savings from recycling, or even the environmental impact of your efforts. These insights allow you to adjust your strategies in real time and highlight your successes.
Mobile applications
With an intuitive interface, you can monitor the status of waste management in your facility in real time. Receive instant notifications when bins are full or require special attention, adjust routes with a few simple actions, and track interventions in real time. The app turns your data into management tools, with customizable dashboards to analyze performance, detect inefficiencies, and anticipate needs. This allows you to reduce unnecessary trips, prevent overflow, and improve user satisfaction, all while contributing to a more sustainable future.
Regulatory compliance software
Regulations are constantly evolving: stay up to date with compliance software!
Say goodbye to the stress of manual updates and unexpected audits: this solution allows you to centralize all your data and ensure compliance in real time. You can easily document your processes, automate the creation of regulatory reports, and generate compliance proof with a single click. Compliance software secures your operations, strengthens your credibility, and saves you valuable time in waste management.
MoveWORK Flow: the solution that combines all the features on a single platform
The all-in-one MoveWORK Flow platform brings together all the key features to optimize waste management. First, thanks to its wide ecosystem of compatible sensors and connected devices, MoveWORK Flow collects real-time field data. Its system centralizes all the information, analyzes it automatically, and then triggers automated processes to resolve incidents. The platform locates the right teams in the right place to ensure quick resolution times.
For example, when a fill-level sensor detects that a bin is full, the data is transmitted to MoveWORK Flow, which automatically triggers an intervention request and sends a notification to the nearest agent via their mobile app.
Then, MoveWORK Flow generates detailed dashboards, providing a complete and accurate overview of operations: bin fill levels, maximum downtime, average intervention time, and more. With its building editor, you can easily assess performance by zone, team, or type of waste. In case of inefficiency, you can quickly adjust your processes. Furthermore, all this data serves as solid proof during audits and ensures that your practices meet compliance and sustainability requirements.
To go further, the MoveWORK Flow platform can be paired with mobile applications dedicated to different user profiles, whether for agents, occupants, or managers. These apps send instant notifications and alert your teams whenever an intervention is required. Thanks to this responsiveness, your teams can adapt in real time to the specific needs of each site.
