System for tracking waste or recyclable material in a waste stream including documentation of material weight

Abstract

Systems, methods and devices are provided for tracking and managing waste or recyclable materials, which may include one or more devices enabled to capture and record information about waste material at a point in a distribution chain, as well as information technology systems for collecting, processing, analyzing and otherwise managing information about a large number and variety of streams of waste material. A system includes a label reader for reading a label that was associated with a batch of material at an originating site, a device for measuring a parameter indicative of the weight of the batch of material, and a communications facility for communicating the weight of the batch of material and the label information to a system for tracking the batch of waste material.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application claims the benefit of U.S. provisional patent application 62 / 190,055 (FEED-0001-P01), filed Jul. 8, 2015, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.BACKGROUND[0002]1. Field[0003]The present disclosure generally relates to computing and information technology systems, devices, and methods for collecting, managing, measuring, and tracking recyclable and waste materials and providing feedback on the material collected for the purposes of billing, compliance assurance, performance assessment, and the like.[0004]2. Description of the Related Art[0005]Many commercial organizations undertake recycling initiatives with associated goals and incentives. However, in the case of large organizations, such as where the material for recycling may be collected from a plurality of stores and locations, with today's limited information technology infrastructure it may be difficult to track how individual stores are performi...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0126]Methods and systems relating to a smart forklift may further include a forklift; a communication module enabled to receive data characteristic of the unit of material being transported; a logic and data storage module for associating, for each unit of material, information from the label and characteristic data; and a communications module for transmitting label information and characteristic data to an analytic server. Such methods and systems may include an RFID reader for reading a label from unit of material being transported

Problems solved by technology

However, in the case of large organizations, such as where the material for recycling may be collected from a plurality of stores and locations, with today's limited information technology infrastructure it may be difficult to track how individual stores are performing, individually or relative to one another, with respect to recycling efficiency and goal compliance.

A large organization that uses a distribution center for the receipt, temporary storage, and redistribution of goods and materials may be able to obtain measurements made at the distribution center that indicate the total amount of material received in a given period from stores in a chain, but with current systems it can be difficult to identify the relative contribution made by each of the different stores.

As a result, individual stores may not be rewarded or penalized based on their actual performance, relative to organizational goals of recycling, which may tend to cause individual stores to undertake only minimal efforts

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