One of the Largest Smart Waste Deployments in Buenos Aires

Smart waste management in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Project and customer description

Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina and one of Latin America’s largest metropolitan areas with over 13 million inhabitants, is a major hub for commerce, culture, and technology. In line with its ambition to maintain high-quality waste management services, the city launched one of the largest smart waste monitoring projects in South America. A total of 4,500 Sensoneo ultrasonic fill-level sensors were deployed in general waste containers, including both 1,100-liter bins and semi-underground containers. The project was carried out in partnership with the local technology provider Urbertrack.

Challenge

GOAL: bin placement optimization and gathering data for future contract

As the city’s population and activities continue to grow, traditional fixed-frequency waste collection has become increasingly inefficient. Collections often occur regardless of whether containers are full, while in other areas, bins may overflow due to higher waste generation. This mismatch creates unnecessary costs, operational inefficiencies, and environmental impact. Buenos Aires required reliable, real-time data to optimize bin placement and design a future collection system that could respond dynamically to actual waste production.

Solution

Buenos Aires has deployed 4.500 smart ultrasonic bin sensors by Sensoneo into bins with general waste. Sensors are  installed into 1100 liters types of containers, as well as semi-underground bins. The main objective of these installations is the fill-level monitoring of bins for plastic in order to gather valuable data on waste production, which in the first phase allows to optimize bins placement. The city plans to use the data when concluding a new contract for waste collection – with such information it is possible to switch from fixed collection frequency to a dynamic one, optimising collection routes and collecting only the bins that are full.

City of Buenos Aires and Sensoneo partner and technology provider of the installations Urbetrack have selected Sensoneo waste monitoring solution based on the positive experience with a testing phase with the Sensoneo starter kit. One of the benefits was also connectivity versatility and the possibility of Sensoneo sensors to work both on NB-IoT, as well as LoRaWAN IoT networks.