Dive summary:

• Two departments in the Schulich School of Engineering in Calgary, Alberta, Canada are assisting the city waste program to improve service.
• The city runs waste for 300,000 residents, three landfills and a number of community recycling depots.
• The students predict how much waste is expected throughout the year, how to manage drivers, the cost and quality of service for routes of varying difficulties and importance, the qualifications of the staff, the number of trucks used and length of route.

From the article:

The city’s Waste and Recycling Services (WRS) employs hundreds of operators, runs three landfills and a number of community recycling depots and is aiming to recycle 80 per cent of the city’s waste by 2020.

That’s a lot of moving parts, not to mention trucks, and Ruhe and his lab have helped WRS make better decisions based on objective data. Those decisions include “which type of vehicle, how many do they need, what type of routing for the vehicles, that sort of thing.” ...