City of Scottsdale: AI Digital Assistant for Waste Management

Recognised as a leader in innovation, the City of Scottsdale’s Solid Waste team needed a more accessible and scalable way to help residents understand what could and couldn’t be recycled, while reducing the number of routine waste queries reaching staff.

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For residents, finding the right information about how to dispose of household waste often meant searching websites or directly contacting Scottsdale’s waste team. For Scottsdale’s staff, answering these recurring questions was taking valuable time away from other priorities, and from queries that required a human touch.

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Why AI-Powered Waste Engagement Matters:

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Effective waste management depends on residents having clear, accessible information at the moment they need it. When guidance is difficult to find or understand, it can lead to confusion around the disposal of household items, making it challenging to change everyday waste-sorting behaviours and reduce contamination.

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AI-powered engagement provides waste management teams across cities like the City of Scottsdale with a scalable way to instantly answer community questions, whilst creating a valuable source of insight into the questions and challenges communities face, all without increasing the demand on staff.

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‍Our Solution (an AI Digital Assistant and Digital Team Member):

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Hello Recycling is an AI-powered Digital Team Member created by Hello Lamp Post, acting as a digital extension of their team to help support their community in the correct sorting of household waste, 24/7.

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In select neighborhoods, residents across the City of Scottsdale were able to engage in a natural, two-way conversation via QR-enabled signage on their residential trash cans. Using their mobile phone, users could receive instant, location-specific answers to questions around the correct disposal of household items, and access real-time information on collection days, without waiting in customer service queues, or searching online.

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Reducing Pressure on City Waste Management Teams:

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By handling routine waste queries, Hello Recycling reduced the number of queries requiring involvement from Scottsdale’s Solid Waste team. This gave their team more time to focus on supporting complex queries and other operational priorities, whilst our Digital Team Members provided consistent support to residents around the clock.

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Each conversation also created a new source of insight, unlocking greater visibility of the needs and challenges residents face when recycling across Scottsdale. With access to the data via a real-time dashboard, staff could identify information gaps, better understand resident needs and make more informed decisions.

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Project Outcomes:

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For the City of Scottsdale, deploying Hello Recycling across select neighborhoods achieved:

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• A reduction in staff time spent responding to calls and queries from the public

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• An improvement in the efficiency / success of Scottsdale's recycling services

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• Automation of 311 reporting system - allowing residents to report problems, and for staff to easily follow up on issues

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