Dive Brief:

• Bigbelly Inc. of Needham, MA announced its new Connect smart waste and recycling system, which encompasses hardware, software, installation, training, customer support, warranty, cleaning, inspection, and system monitoring for a monthly fee.

• Connect uses software and cloud connectivity to give customers real-time information so they can make operational decisions. Bigbelly said in a press release, "After initial site mapping and station configuration consulting, hardware installation, and onboarding, customers receive ongoing service and support, best practices, cleaning service, and annual inspections." Previous to Connect, the company's customer agreements only offered the hardware with the basic software dashboard. 
• In the last 12 years, the company has installed over 30,000 trash and recycling containers across the globe that use solar power to compact garbage. Bigbelly customers include municipalities, colleges and universities, health care facilities and corporations.

Dive Insight:

Bigbelly Vice President of Marketing Leila Dillon told Waste Dive that the company wanted to develop Connect "so that every single customer going forward no longer thought of this as buying trash stations, but instead about entering into a partnership with Bigbelly." Dillon explained that existing customers will also be adapted into the Connect system, however it is a more expensive price than the previous system. 

"They paid for the hardware, they paid for the software, but now we're going to be adding things like additional training, warranty for the entire term of the agreement, we're going to start cleaning and inspecting their stations, and we're going to start working with them collectively to make sure they're getting the most out of their system by looking at the data that they've been able to collect and help them with best practices that they can implore," Dillon said. 

Dillon also explained that from now on, Connect will be a required service package for customers. "We're changing our whole business model," she said. 

In September, Bigbelly explained to Waste Dive that its solar-powered, compacting container can handle five times the amount of trash that similar-sized containers can hold. Bigbelly also allows customers to customize its system, and some Bigbelly stations even host Wi-Fi hotspots. Bigbelly has thousands of customers in cities across the word, including New York City, Iowa City and Detroit. 

CEO Jack Kutner said in a press release, "Adding a complete turnkey service package enables customers to focus on their waste efforts." It's also a welcome step to adding more tech to the waste and recycling industry.