Why Use GIS for Waste Management

Discover how the City of Hamilton is improving relationships with citizens, while reducing the effort required by office staff—all using Esri’s advanced GIS technology. 

The City of Hamilton’s bulk waste pickup program allows citizens to schedule a pickup of large, bulky waste that can’t fit into a garbage bag or bin. As part of this program, City office staff were fielding up to 150 calls per month from citizens calling about pickups that they had scheduled, but that were missed. Neither office staff nor citizens had an easy way of knowing why these pickups had been missed. Any time they wanted to find out, they had to find the driver and ask directly. 

It turned out that for these ~150 calls per month, the bulk waste in question was often not picked up because it didn’t meet the program’s pickup requirements. 

To help waste management workers better communicate the reasoning for each missed pickup, the City of Hamilton’s GIS team built an interactive map application. Now, with just a few taps on a mobile device, workers can upload photos of the waste and note the issues preventing pickup. 

After a month-long pilot, calls about missed pickups were reduced from almost 150 to only three. 

This video shows how the City of Hamilton is using GIS tools to modernize workflows, improve communication inside and outside of the organization, and find efficiencies. 

#EsriCanada #WasteManagement #GIS #CityOfHamilton #ArcGIS #ArcGISQuickCapture 

Watch the full video for a deep dive into how Esri’s advanced GIS technology is enabling the City of Hamilton to revolutionize their waste management workflows and improve relationships with residents: https://youtu.be/O0tTAF54-cA?si=RqRdIGA7fBSJ8otE 

Perhaps this could be shortened to esri.ca/hamiltonbulkwaste ? 

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