Bury council defends iPads for binmen

Bury council has defended its decision to spend £9,000 on iPads for its fleet of refuse trucks, saying the devices will allow it to provide a real time bin collection service. The council has come under severe criticism for purchasing 22 of the touchscreen devices, which retail at around £400 each, just months after unveiling …

[Anonymous Coward]

Cor Blimey Guvnor!

Ohhhhhh.....

My old man's a dustman,

He's got a new iPad,

He says the Council's barmy,

And the man who bought it mad.

He looks a proper nana,

As he Wi-Fi's on his rounds,

It's covered in detritus,

What a waste of Council pounds.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we also have some hard facts?

@Bit Fiddler: "What a waste of Council pounds."

First up - great verse, made my day. I almost hummed the tune aloud.

But on a serious note, I can't be so dismissive of equipment purchases. If we always made decisions solely on the basis of the capital cost, we would also send them out to collect waste with wheelbarrows. If this bit of kit saves them a lot of wasted time and miles driving back for missed bins, they might well stand to save money.

I'd like to see some hard figures - it's to easy to be dismissive of council decisions when you don't have the full picture.

[Anonymous Coward]

9K huh?

Did anyone consider the alternative of telling their staff to do there job propperly or they will lose it.

If they can do that then they can tell those pesky people who woke up too late to put the bin out on time that its tuff luck, move it yourself or wait for 2 weeks till the next pick up

Im sorry thats a complete waste of money when there is a much simplier solution, you will also need to factor in the time needed for training, tech support, damaged units and finally WHY did they have to go for the most expensive product on the market when a 2003 model PDA would and does do the same job that they would be using it for!!

Insanity.

[Si 1]

"We need to urgently improve our recycling rates"

Is it me, or does recycling have absolutely nothing to do with this? It's supposedly all about making sure the "Waste Management Officers" or binmen as I like to call them, don't miss anyone's bins.

Suddenly they're talking about landfill costs and recycling. Is the real reason for buying iPads so the little Hitlers in the local council can track who is and isn't doing any recycling?

[A J Stiles]

Well .....

If some lazy, selfish waste of oxygen is putting recyclables in their "residual waste" bin, then the local council not only aren't getting the money that they would have raised by selling them to a recycling merchant, but also they have to pay to bury them in landfill. Meaning, honest people's council tax goes up.

[Anonymous Coward]

pay to bury them in landfill...

Not quite, pay a 'tax' imposed by central government if buried in landfill.

To avoid that, they 'recycle': pay for a long obcure paper trail to disguise the fact that it ends up in a landfill on the other side of the world.

[Robert E A Harvey]

No

Yes, there is a landfil tax.

But the hole in the ground is usually owned by some faceless company who will charge for that too.

I am afraid councils pay quite a lot for landfill.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the reason Apple is selling so many iPads?

I'm sure there were touchscreens before the iPad... How come they were not used before? Too expensive? Too difficult to code for? Or is it simply that people only realized now how useful it was?

[Test Man]

Yes there was.

Yep, there was tablets years before the iPad (Windows XP Tablet Edition, one example of the OS on one), however, they were cubmersome and lumbered with XP, which isn't exactly tablet friendly, even the special version made for it.

[Danny 14]

waste

for a generic app any of crap would do. Even a CE powered touchpad

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly why Apple sell iPad.

They were told by Apple that it would revolutionise everything people do, including collecting bins. The world is full of idiots that believe everything Apple/Microsoft tell them...

[Yet Another Commentard]

Re: This is exactly why Apple sell iPad.

Indeed.

This is true - at work we have been tasked with thinking of things you could use an iPad for that are work related. A client wants to buy some, but does not know why.

Also - I travel by train a lot. I see a lot of iPads. Typical use is Angry Birds, then read <newspaper> then put away, get out <laptop of whatever flavour including macbooks> to do work.

On the subject of this, as I recall one of the problems with paper was it got wet. Which is clearly not a problem for delicate electronics, them being well regarded in the waterproof department.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: This is exactly why Apple sell iPad.

Soon, the binmen will be sitting in the cab doing that stupid swipe gesture at the bins through the window and wondering why they don't go and empty themselves at the back of the vehicle. That's the future, people!

[Anonymous Coward]

iPAQ

I know other local authority services that needed real time job updates used to use iPAQ handhelds for this.

An iPad is probably superior in terms of battery life and the larger screen easier to work on and code for - the TCO won't be greatly different, so if it works there's no reason not to buy an Apple just because they are fashionable.

I might be concerned about the robustness perhaps and how well suited they are to people who wear gloves most of the time.

[Yet Another Commentard]

Re: An iPad is probably superior in terms of battery life

Most vehicles have a big battery continually recharged by the engine, and a cigarette lighter socket you could use to power whatever device you have.

[Tom 7]

Brilliant

Next person who shows me how amazing it is that their IPad can behave exactly like a computer will be referred to as an IBinPerson.

Shame BuryTC wasted about £7000 on the hardware though.

[Giles Jones]

Alternatives?

What should they have bought instead? Cheap Advent devices from PC world?

That would be good, bin men parked up by the side of the road running "cyanogenmod" and messing about with the tablet to get it to "do what they want".

[Chris Miller]

messing about with the tablet to get it to "do what they want"

Err, isn't that the job of the IT (sorry, ITC, we're dealing with local government after all) dept? (Assuming it hasn't been outsourced to Crapita.)

Every parcels van is now accompanied by a hand-held on which you can sign for delivery. I don't see many of them using iPhones or iPads, instead they prefer something more rugged that will last longer than a week. But then, they have to operate in the commercial world, rather than the rarefied atmosphere of spending other people's money.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Chris Miller

What you fail to realise though is that parcel delivery companies revolutionised the hand-held device idea. They were the ones to first buy into the idea that immediate tracking up to the point of delivery (including signature) was a good thing to eliminate as many as possible complaints about missed deliveries, delayed deliveries, deliveries to neighbours etc...

With the lowest-spec 3G iPad, Bury Council can not only lock down what gets put onto an iPad (app restrictions mean no App Store, no Angry Birds, and only the apps that they've wanted you to have), but with the right software, are able to push down immediate notifications about missed bins on a route instead of having to wait until, as the moany MP put it, the paper clipboards with the maps return to the depot.

That *does* save money, especially if the 'missed bin' is at the outskirts of the bin depot's region to collect in, and at £1.40/litre *minimum* in diesel cost, it's a good cost saving over a year.

Provided the iPad is installed in a good cradle that protects the device, there's no reason to believe that this is a waste.

[Chris Miller]

@SP

And all that can only be achieved on a 10" 1024x768 colour screen, right? Even though every logistics operation in the world seems to be of a different opinion.

Let me guess, you work in the public sector, don't you.

[1Rafayal]

@Giles Jones

No, the alternative is simply not to waste money on iPads for binmen in the first place...

[Neil 23]

Well...

Why not some decent little netbooks for less than half the cost? Or they have these things now called mobile phones...

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine you're a dustman driving a large truck.

Then answer your own question.

[Graham Marsden]

@Imagine you're a dustman driving a large truck

... at a speed of about three miles an hour, stopping every fifty feet or so...

[Naughtyhorse]

mobile fucking phone maybe??

thats all

[Morteus]

What a coincidence...

A couple of days ago, a chap from the council turned up at my door to fit a new bath. When I reported the fault they said I'd get a call to let me know when they were coming (which never happened). As I was going out I told him he'd have to arange another time.

"No problem!" he says, and whips out an HTC. The next 10 minutes where spent on the door step while he continualy apologised and tried to get a connection to the database. In the end he scribbled some notes on a piece of paper and said he'd update it when he could get a connection.

Apparently, all the workmen had been issued with these phones and they were all cursing about them. "Was better when we had a list" he grumbled.

[Miek]

Blame Network

See title...

[Anonymous Coward]

@morteus

Sorry to be a pain - but you have Council workers fitting your bath? This probably means you're living in a Council house? If so - get a job you lazy bugger and stop spending your time on thereg. If you have a job - get out of that house and start renting you thieving git.

Sorry - but a pet peeve of mine. Council houses should not to be given to everyone - only people in desperate need.

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh?

What makes you think he doesn't have a job?

Because he rents his house?

It's a bit of a stretch don't you think?

[Anonymous Coward]

@skelband

Try re-reading that rant maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could do with more detail

As I still can't see how the iPads are gonna help. What part of the process does the iPad take on? Sounds like another Local Authority that hasn't thought this out properly and entrusted it to some middle manager (who probably isn't qualified to be a manager) and made them the Project Manager (again will not be qualified for this either).

There are a lot of Local Authority employees that work hard and do a good job, unfortunately they are usually outnumbered by middle management twats that ruin all the good work and waste budgets on daft ideas.

AC cause I have one of those middle managers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Revisit

>revealed that there were 4,228 reports of missed bins last year. Costing £40 each to revisit

Wouldn't it be cheaper to tell the complainants that their bin was at a slight angle to the road and in order to prevent injury to the refuse engineer's back from twisting said bin they were unable to collect it. Oh, and by the way, there will be a fine in the next post.

[Dirk Vandenheuvel]

What?

What are these guys thinking? There are industrial devices for this that will survive a lot more abuse. Those iPads will be all dead in a year.

[Anonymous Coward]

A year ? A week more like.

I worked for a company that had to make deliveries of gas cylinders. We *trialled* the drivers with proper ruggedized tablet devices, and most got broken within the first month. Nothing malicious, just knocks and scrapes and bangs.

It's pretty obvious this is a stunt to use up any surplus budget, to avoid losing it next year. I really don't see how dishing some fancy office-candy around a heavy industrial environment can be the result of a carefully planned project to improve bin collections.

I bet a FOI request this time next year will find that >50% of the iPads purchased "can't be located". I also predict a random swoop on refuse collectors residences would reveal an iPad.

[Steve Todd]

Knocks and scrapes and bangs

when it's nailed to the dashboard in a protective mount? That would have to be malicious.

I'm assuming that the council are buying the base 3G model ('cause the WiFi version doesn't have GPS to start with), they would become large satnav systems with popup messages from base telling them to go back to number 53 etc.

The main objection seems to be that it's Apple kit (which is priced about the same as competitors), not that it won't solve the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

you clearly

haven't worked anywhere near heavy manual labour. Binmen have to wear hi-vis jackets which have metal straps and buckles - so they will swing around on entry/exit to the cab.

Then they wear heavy riggers gloves, which make delicate control difficult, so the screen is more at risk (because the council knows any directive which is going to require the drivers to remove/replace their gloves every minute will be an issue. Especially in my LA which had to spunk extra tens of thousands to the dust cart manufacturers for controls to be workable wearing gloves). Then there are the big boots which get swung around ... and the hard hats.

However, I am pleased this story ran. Because it is plainly obvious that if an LA can plurge £9K on such a totally inappropriate use of technology, then clearly their council tax payers are getting *very* good value for money.

By the way, this *isn't* a rant at refuse collectors. They work damn hard (I wouldn't do it) and I feel sorry for them having this frippery foisted upon them.

FFS even the little smartpad we used in Debenhams to compile our wedding list was built for life in a coal mine. When I queried it, the girl said they had tried 7 different models, and none had lasted for more than a month.

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK

The driver doesn't wear gloves. I did it as a fill-in job for a couple of weeks and there was a dedicated driver (me) and a couple of guys to feed the bins into the back of the truck. Again, as far as I know, this is a pretty standard setup...the driver as a rule doesn't do much in the way of moving stuff; the driver's job is to put the vehicle in the right place to make the jobs of the loaders as easy as possible.

In theory all that would be needed would be a live map with the bin lorry's location (and maybe route, thus making life easier for new/relief drivers too) on it; a view of a few adjacent streets with uncollected bins in (marked by -say- flashing dots). The driver could then efficiently plan the extra missions...all without needing to touch the screen except to turn it on & off at the beginning & end of each shift. I can see how it could work.

Of course, being a council, I doubt if it'll work like that in practice.

[Ivan Headache]

And you clearly

haven't seen my binmen.

They wear hi-vis tabards with no metal straps or buckles that swing (if they had those they would be a H&S hazard in their own right).

The driver never leaves his seat - therefore does not wear any gloves. None of them wear hard-hats (why should they? the sky isn't likely to fall on their heads) and the majority (there's only 2 bin-men per truck (plus the diver)) appear to wear trainers or 'normal-looking' footware (possibly the safety sort) though).

I can't say I've noticed that they wear heavy riggers gloves, and in any case they don't apear to press anything while doing my street. They just move the bins to the back of the truck and the automation does the rest.

Thinking about your post, your LA must have tried really hard if they bought dustcarts with controls that couldn't be operated with gloves. Ours have levers with knobs the size of golf-balls and push-button emergency things the size of tennis balls.

[Steve Todd]

@AC 14:32 - The DRIVER has to wear heavy gloves?

Pull the other one. He sits in a nice warm cab while the rest of the crew scurry around outside with the gloves on. I've also yet to see these swinging buckles of which you speak. If, even for one moment we took your claims seriously you seem to be working under the assumption that the screen needs to be permanently accessible and uncovered by something like a polycarbonate flap.

You seem to be under the impression that a device fixed in a case will suffer the same abuse as a shared mobile one. Think again for your comparisons.

[David Dawson]

Council does what?

As far as I'm concerned, the councils job is to collect the bins, repair the roads and educate the kids.

Anything else is secondary.

Based on that, they should be spending my money on collecting my crap each week, on roads that don't have potholes and pay the teachers.

This fits with my philosophy. Investing in an essential service doesn't strike me as a bad idea. If it really does what they say it does (ie, save money). If it doesn't then that would be a problem. tbh though, in the context of a council budget, £9k is not that big a problem to have go horribly wrong.

Imagine if they tried implementing SAP and got it wrong, causing all of their suppliers to be paid a year after invoice for ages; there by damaging local business who tried to work with the council, until they finally tamed the beast!

Oh, we laughed. (I'm looking at you Manchester)

[Anonymous Coward]

@David Dawson

Not just Manchester - this blog details some of the cock ups further south

http://www.liddellgrainger.org.uk/ian/MOGGTHEBLOG.html

[Graham Dawson]

even that much?

When the councils were set up, they had one, single job and were called local water authorities. The one thing they did ws manage water quality and supplies in that order. Everything else was handled by parishes, incorporated towns and all the little councils that have been slowly but surely erased. Perhaps we should go back to that instead? One advantage is, they wouldn't have a big enough budget to splurge surplus on iToys. They'd also have to be more responsive to local problems rather than spending all their budget on follies and bridges named after the council leader.

also, I'm starting to think we're like the Hitchens brothers. Only more sane.

[Vic]

Re: Council does what?

> the councils job is to collect the bins, repair the roads and educate the kids.

Not so, according to my local Councillor.

He bashed my door the other day and asked if there was anything I'd like to speak to him about. Well, the fact that our bins have been emptied once in 9 weeks and we now have a rat infestation in the street was somewhat to the front of my mind.

The Council charge for bin collections. But, apparently, bin collections are a "discretionary" service. Which means that, even though they've charged for collecting them, they apparently have no duty whatsoever actually to fulfill that service.

The twats.

Vic.

[TonyG]

@Vic

I suggest that you mention the "Environmental Protection Act 1990" to your local Councillor.

The collection of green waste, for example, can be classed as discretionary as it's above and beyond the legal requirements of the council but the collection of general waste is covered by the above act.

(Granted there's a lot of get out clauses but in general your councillor is likely talking bollocks).

[Vic]

@TonyG...

> Your councillor is likely talking bollocks

No change there then.

Vic.

[Joe Montana]

Encouraging recycling...

If you want to encourage recycling and reduce landfill use...

Bring back the old bottle fees, where an extra 10p is added to the price of anything in a bottle, and you get it refunded when you return the bottle. I believe they actually still do this in Holland. Do the same with other types of packaging.

Also when recycling glass bottles, don't smash them up and melt them down... Just clean them and reuse them.

Reduce packaging, especially horrible types of packaging like blister packs, back in the days stuff used to come in biodegradable brown paper bags... There is no need for fancy packaging, its whats inside that counts and if companies are concerned that generic packaging will prevent their product from standing out, then institute a blanket ban so everyone is in the same boat. You can also have promotional material on the shelves rather than the packaging. 99% of my household waste is unnecessary packaging.

Reduce plastic packaging, use paper or card whenever possible... Plastic is mostly only really needed for holding liquids, and then the bottles can be reused as above.

Treat biodegradable waste separately, that can be rotted down.

Have convicts and the long term unemployed sort rubbish according to its type, so it can be more easily recycled. Make working a condition of receiving any benefits, if you don't find a better job this is what you do.

There really isn't a whole lot that needs to go into landfill, most can be recycled or rotted down (i.e. natural recycling)...

[bob 46]

^Agreed. And also..

Many councils propose charging people who don't recycle enough. This is idiotic. It will only get people's backs up and encourage fly tipping, garden fires etc. Instead, increase council tax a bit, then use the extra to offer financial rewards for people who recycle more. See how that works? The same chavs who would be tipping their rubbish on the street or burning toxic plastic etc to avoid charges will now be actively out LOOKING for stuff to put in their recycling. Net cost exactly the same, net result much more recycling.

[Anonymous Coward]

@bob 46

Heh, the cynic in me says that's a bad idea!

Why? It'll start out as you say, then the council will decide they've encouraged enough people, cut the rewards but not readjust the rates. The money will then get blown on something pointless (£9k of iPads perhaps?)

[mark 63]

spot on Joe

Theres no purer form of recycling than straight up immediate re-use. I shudder to think of the energy and resorces that go into melting down a load of glass bottles to make - glass bottles, when just a rinse out would have done.

Remember that coffee advert recently, where they were all smug that they'd "reduced packaging" ? The advert showed loads of people struggling to carry loose coffee in their pocket, or bra etc , hence the need for packaging . If the stupid bastards just brought a container with them we could have zero packaging!

A similar soluton could be applied top the carrier bag epidemic

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed

Charge a bit less if you bring your own container, perhaps.

[Matt2012]

Neither the Left or Right will allow Common Sense over Self-Interest

Totally agree. Guaranteed low-paid work is a win for the unemployed who get self-esteem and future employability and a win for everyone else as they get something for their tax.

However The left do not want their well-paid middle-class public sector jobs to be threatened so wont allow it. They would rather deal with the symptoms of mass-unemployment than take a pay-and-perks cut to end it. The right would rather whine on about dole scroungers and benefit cheats than take the obvious next step of no-benefits/guaranteed work.

For those who think you could stop benefits without providing work - the London Riots would seem like a street fete and you would also have to deal with child hunger and epidemics - in other words it cant and wont happen. The private sector cant be coerced into employing people so state work is the only sensible option.

Of course in reality both the frothy headed liberal guardian left and the frothy mouthed right wing daily mailites actually secretly love having an underclass to beat there chests about.

[Mike007]

ipads?

why expensivelockeddownpads? i assume this will be just to access a web interface of some kind that a £50 tablet from china or one of the piles of tablets clogging up the distributors warehouses can do just as well (probably better in many cases)?

not that a tablet is probably the best option here, i imagine a traditional computer system with a keyboard interface would last a lot longer than a touch screen considering the nature of the user...

[John Bailey]

Rough guess...

The manager who proposed it has an iPad, or was told to check out tablets, and only looked at iPads.

[asiaseen]

How can bin collection

be anything but "real time"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone with too much time on his hands...

Acutally... real time bin collection would be the bin men coming round just as your bin gets full. The current system of scheduled collection is clearly a batch process.

/The one with the orange patch across the shoulders

[The Mole]

How..

I've reread the article but I'm still lacking in understanding of what exactly these iPads are doing to improve things - in particular beyond what a simple mobile phone which can send/receive SMS's and make phone calls?

[Jason Bloomberg]

How indeed

83,000 homes with a collection every fortnight equals 2,158,000 bins emptied per year, of which 4,228 were missed..

4,228 is 16 missed out of 16,600 per collection day. Unless the collectors are skipping whole streets occasionally it isn't clear how they'll not keep missing the odd one or two, or even 16.

I'm also not sure how they come up with their £40 per bin missed; does it really cost £640 to collect those missed 16 bins ?

Perhaps it's a pretext? What we need is an ID tag on every bin ...

[Robert E A Harvey]

id

We have RFID on our bins. The council were going to weigh and charge until there was a stink about the idea, then they said they were not going to use the RFID.

However when one bloke took his tags out and posted them to the chief executive, the council stopped collecting his bins in a fit of overzealous pique. Look up "Brynley Heaven" on the FWSE

[Anonymous Coward]

it *will* happen

over 10 years ago, I worked for a major weighing firm, and one of the projects that floated our way was weigh and pay. We knocked up a prototype load cell which linked through the bin lift cradle, and had an early style NFC device in it. Worked a treat. We then knocked up a database app to log details. Again, worked a treat. Interestingly enough, this was for Dublin council (who were very happy with it).

Then senior management balked, because the project would sell few load cells (which they liked) and a lot of software (which they didn't understand).

Anyway, the point is that the whole thing is ALREADY possible under EU law. The bottom line is the EU has mandated the UK government to allow councils to charge the householder *directly* for tipped waste. In effect *you* have to pay the landfill tax directly. AIRI the main barrier was the fact that many UK LA's share landfills. And another provision of the EU directive is that LAs are allowed to charge for the use of their landfill. This would result in LAs that have decided not to invest in landfill and waste management (Harrow) being charged by those that do (Ealing). Even worse, LAs are allowed to devolve the cost to the customer. At the same time, another project I worked on was to link a councils council tax database to their waste facilties to enable them to charge out-of-borough tippers. We got as far as a barcode on the CT bill being scanned at the depot before the plug got pulled on that (again, management claiming we "didn't do software" - even though it was a generous EU grant funded proposal).

Bottom line is I predict that within the next 10 years, we'll be pay as you tipping. Not that I care, as one of the preequisites will be wheelie bins, and my LA just won't pay for them.

[Tim #3]

Hmmm

I don't know what's more surprising, that missed bins are "Costing £40 each to revisit", or that their correspondent needs to point out that ipads are made by Apple.

[Naughtyhorse]

dunno

half a dozen blokes on min wage, plus run an expensive truck, £40 seems to be pretty good value for money (this assumes that said missed bin is not immediately outside the depot)

and I thought foxcon made ipads :D

[Paul Shirley]

WTF?

How does real time reporting help if the unfortunate householder reports their bin was missed when they get home from work? Round these parts the bin men wake me up ludicrously early but never, ever put in an appearance after mid afternoon.

All this will do is make them make *more* return visits. Idiot politicians strike again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Rubbish!

This is a load of tosh! I worked on the bins for about 4 years and the main reason bins are missed is because people don't put them out. None of the lads at our depot missed a bin because if you did you'd have the p*ss taken out of you when you got the order to go back. There'd be dozens of people on every round who would run after the truck because they forgot to put their bins out. Wasting money like this is only a sticking plaster approach to those who aren't responsible enough to remember their bins.

AC bacause I bet a few people reading this also forgot to put their bin out (and I'm not a binman any more!)

[Anonymous Coward]

An enquiring mind wishes to know...

"This is a load of tosh! I worked on the bins for about 4 years and the main reason bins are missed is because people don't put them out."

I was just wondering whether whoever recruited you into IT picked-up on the phrase "garbage collection" in your CV and decided you'd be great for their C++ opportunity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not always

My sister's bin has been missed a few times, it gets put out in the middle of an alleyway at the back of two rows of houses (that has accessible roads at each end), they park the lorry at the top and work to the middle, then move it to the bottom and work to the middle, except they don't always reach the middle!

More relevant to this article though, many people wouldn't notice their bin hadn't been collected until they finished work at the end of the day, so the missed collection wouldn't get logged onto the council's system until after the end of the working day for the binmen, making the real-time data irrelevant!

It's not just council collections that get missed though, I volunteer in a charity shop, and sometimes the commercial bin company we use doesn't show (or shows and doesn't empty the bin). The most recent excuse was that the bin lid wouldn't shut completely... you don't need it to shut to empty it! Also it's not likely that the bin will be any less full the next time they come round to collect... Just in case anyone's wondering why things get thrown away rather than stuck out and sold, some people do seem to use charity collections as a rubbish collection service, we had a bag of rotting food donated recently.

[Just Thinking]

They often miss my bin

My house shares a drive with the neighbour, so it doesn't have a boundary with the street. The bags are clearly visible, but they have to walk 10 yards to get it, and sometimes it seems they can't be arsed.

I can't really put my rubbish on the neighbours drive, and in the current climate I don't want to leave it out on the pavement in case I get sued when somebody trips over it.

The rubbish is collected by a contract company, but missed collections are picked up by the council in a small van, so there isn't any comeback on the collection company when they decide not to bother.

[skevmeister]

Not Just £9k

Is it me or does that just seem a bit short. If you spent £9k on the fondle slabs so that you can provide real time data. Just how much are you spending on the software solution to provide that real time data?

Just watch out for the Google Sponsored Bin rounds I tell you !!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

YouTube?

People see this as if the binmen will be watching YouTube videos rather than collecting the bins. If they actually help them cut down on paperwork, provide a better service than the cost is hardly significant?

Think the idea about recycling is to be able to note people who are 'not' and be able to send them a letter to ask them to recycle. If they are paying much more for landfill and even save a quarter of their estimate it will pay for itself many times over in less than a year.

The reason they probably bought iPads is that you can get a load of accessories (easily) - like mounting kits etc., they are probably easier to use and anyway many similar tablets are just as expensive - i.e. one with 3G connectivity etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

Insert title here for no good reason

Cost is *always* significant. Your council could provide improvements in every single service they run if they chucked millions of pounds at them. But then your council tax (or some other related payment) would go up, and you'd be up in arms.

The benefits and costs of a course of action must be weighed up against the risks and costs of not taking that course of action, as any fule kno.

[skevmeister]

@Bit Fiddler

Bloody brilliant by the way.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good test

of the ipad's build quality. Squaddie proof? Binman proof? much of a difference in the spec between those two?

Sounds to me like someone in the council wants to get iPad/iOS on their CV...

Could (just possibly) be a well thought out, well costed plan (unlikely though). Certainly it's a PR disaster.

Good potential for riposte to polo-necked fanboi who's showing off in the wine bar: "oh an iPad, my binman's got one of those"

[Anonymous Coward]

oh an iPad, my binman's got one of those

And the postman 2 doors away from me has a Rolls Royce.

(Honest)

[Anonymous Coward]

The Future

Ooh! A real time bin collection service. So what was it before?

[HP Cynic]

Missed Apportunity

Supposedly the bins "round our way" have hidden RFID chips in them, now I don't know a whole lot about the capabilities of the iPad or the range of these chips, but could the iPad be setup to directly detect each bin as the lorry passes nearby and the operator tick it off as it's collected?

Or the iPad could be preloaded with a list of all expected bins on the route and mark them off as they go. Since each chip identifies the house to which each bin belongs I'd assume they have a database from which they could easily build this list.

You get the idea: interfacing directly with the bins en route rather than just a means to receive reports of ones they missed after the fact.

[gc_uk]

ideal

First thing I thought off too, but no iPad required. RFID reader or a barcode label sent along with your council tax bill and a scanner in the back of the refuse truck that collects the data.

Maybe the council can give reductions for those who don't need to put their bin out every time (like me).

[Anonymous Coward]

so....

Wouldn't the money have been better spent on figuring out why the bins are being missed in the first place?

Is it Lazy householders not putting bins out? or is it slacker bin men?

For the former, the council should just say put your bins out each week or they won't get emptied,

and if its the latter, they should say, make sure you get everyones bins, or we'll employ someone else who will.

cha-ching, money in the bank(and off of my council tax</wishful thinking>)

[Tony S]

Well..

I can (sort of) see some value; but then the same thing might have been achieved by using other devices / systems. I think what is a bit worrying is that we have a council working on their own on this, instead of a national initiative - call me crazy, but what happens when the other councils in the area decide to develop their own systems which are all incompatable?

I vaguely remember some years ago a council that put trackers in their vehicles and were able to call bin men up, not just to collect bins, but to deal with roadkill or fly tipping. They said then that it was proving valuable, but I haven't heard anything since (not that I've been on the look out for it). It would be interesting to know how it worked out. And of course then to find out if this trial works out as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Industrial devices...

"What are these guys thinking? There are industrial devices for this that will survive a lot more abuse. Those iPads will be all dead in a year."

There are plenty of protective cases for iPads and some of these 'industrial devices' are also about 5-10x the cost.

[Anonymous Coward]

and some of these 'industrial devices' are also about 5-10x the cost.

and why do you think that is ?

Let's put it another way. Under UK law, a sale is a contact based on performance specified as part of the sale.

*You* go to you local Apple store, and say "Hi, I would like to buy 18 touchscreen devices. They have to withstand daily use in a harsh mobile environment where they will be knocked, dropped, covered in various noxious chemicals, and used by manual labourers".

Once you have stated these requirements as part of the sale contract[1], no dealer on earth would sell you an iPad

[1]Because these are specific requirements you made the retailer aware of *before* the sale, as opposed to general requirements you quibble about *after* the sale.

[Poneros]

Errr

Apple addiction should considered a mental illness

[Ian Halstead]

All a bit bi-polar really

It's when you come down afterwards on using a Windows box – that's when the illness really bites.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Rubbish!

"This is a load of tosh! I worked on the bins for about 4 years and the main reason bins are missed is because people don't put them out."

I suspect that possibly the way this sort of IT scheme could work would be that as the bin lorryh goes round its route it displays a list of houses around its current location (using GPS) so that the binmen can mark houses which have not put out their bins. Thus when someone rings up to complain that their bin wasn't emptied then they can be told that as the computer says their bin wasn't put out its not the council's fault. More usefully it can detect houses that regularily put out bins but never recycling so that they can be (re-)educated.

As for tying it all in with RFID chips in bins ... well, that would reply on the binmen stopping their current practice of bin shuffling where they leave emptied bins at random down the road - even when householders have painted numbers on them etc!

[PsychicMonkey]

right!

I'm not sure I could have a larger number painted on my bin, yet I still have to retrieve it from the end of the road most weeks. One week it just disappeared and they had to replace it.

God knows what happened to it!

[peterrat]

excercise

What's wrong with walking a few yards to find your bin (with your number already painted on it)

[PsychicMonkey]

nothing in principle

but you are assuming I'm able-bodied (which I am) so I can walk to the end of the road. What about my 93 year old neighbour?

I leave the stuff outside my house where it is supposed to be, why is it so difficult to put it back where they took it from?

[Andy 115]

As Much as I...

think the iPad could have lots of uses in business.....

Surely the cheapest option in this case would have been either a 2-way radio in the bin waggon (Base to wagon 39, you have missed the bins at 22 arcacia ave, swing by before returning to base) or a £15 mobile phone that one of the "Waste Management Engineers" carries...

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't want...

The bin driver to be on the phone... After all the use of a mobile phone whilst driving is a criminal offence (3 points plus £1000 fine for vans and lorries).

[Nuke]

@ SP "You don't want..."

The bin lorries I see have a crew of at least four. Why would the driver need to be the one who uses the phone?

[Piro]

Really?

An iPad was the cheapest and most versatile choice?

If they had a hard-on for touchscreen shit, they could have at least got a Dell Inspiron Duo, you know, so they could actually run software they might need. What a joke.

[Anonymous Coward]

Shiny

I'll cut through the council doublespeak for you.

No they don't need them on the bins and innumerable cheaper mobile options are available to them.

BUT

they'll have an apple fanboi in It who has been trying to get them in for years and finally has found a niche however small to push them through.

Councillors would early like a shiny ipad to play with but can't justify it. Until now. Now if the bin men can have them then they're fit for the network and the councillors can have their shiny toy. So no objections to this stupid idea from the scrutiny committee.

BUT before you all get excited in Bury waving your new iwillies in the air think of these little points.

1 -Have you thought how this will tie with your GCSx code of connection? CESG hate new kit, and definitely don't like Apple

2 - Capacitative touch screens Vs gloves. All your bin men will wear gloves won't they? Well they won't work. I'd book your appointment with the union rep now.

3 - Workies like things that just work, they won't like having to deal with issues with network problems, 3G black spots. Expect most of your lovely shiny ipads to be accidentally jabbed HARD with nails, pens etc. You have bought spares for when their broken haven't you?

[Anonymous Coward]

@AC 10:55

what makes you think that apple kit would violate their GCSx CoCo or that CESG hate apple? CESG publish an iOS configuration guide for use up to PROTECT you know... if you had access to the CESG policy site you'd be able to download it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Buuut

They released that doc the week before the iOS hack was published.

And of course you can put any complementary controls in that you like to achieve the standards.

[Anonymous Coward]

And

They only released the iOS doc under pressure from politicians who wanted shiny toys and have the clout to get them.

Just because there is a document doesn't mean they like it. There is a wireless manual too and they bloody hate that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Return for a second chance?

"But they insisted the products, made by Apple, could produce significant savings by helping to reduce the number of bins missed by trucks and therefore the number of trips made by the vehicles."

When my rubbish collectors miss my bin, they don't come back looking for it, they make me wait until next week.

[ric melia]

erm...

...don't binmen wear gloves??

[Kubla Cant]

Binmen/gloves

I suspect that the men who empty the bins wear gloves, but the driver doesn't.

[Anonymous Coward]

not round here

the driver loads the bags into the lorry after the gangs have assembled them into neat piles. Started a few years ago as a cost cutting measure. So if they tried that stunt here, where currently the driver leaves his door open while he goes round back, you'd be £9K worth of iPads down before noon.

[brain_flakes]

Good to use off the shelf components...

I'm sure it's cheaper to use iPads instead of custom built solutions, but surely there are evern cheaper tablets (eg. Android) available?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which Operative Uses this?

Is it the guy on the back with big thick gloves? Or the driver? is the driver expected to check this whilst driving or to stop the vehicle and crew for a 5 minute checkup every 25 minutes?

How exactly is this SAVING anything?

Besides that everyone knows that iApps and developers cost more than Android Apps to develop and maintain.

What next B&O bin trucks?

[TheBishop]

Bury Funny

I live in Bury and the council have just announced that from October they will only be able to collect my bin once a fortnight. Obviously the binmen are going to be too busy surfing...

[Greg J Preece]

I get the idea, but why an iPad?

For a start, surely you'd want a device you can reliably use through thick gloves... Also, when I think "rigid, robust, tough screen, good enough to give to a binman", I do not think iPad.

[Ian 27]

hmm

wonder how long it will be before they get nicked from the lorry?

[M Gale]

What...

...you mean they'll fall off the back of it?

[Anonymous Coward]

A bin is the best place for an iPad

See title.

End o' rant.

[TWB]

How will it work though?

This was not mentioned in the article at all.

So I put my bin out on Monday night, go to work on Tuesday morning, it fails to be collected, I call the council on Wednesday to alert them.

What is the iPad (or any other device) for here? I do not see the need - the council will still have to make a recollection - where is the saving?

I like iPads think they look nice devices but fail to see how any device could fix the non-collection issue.

[James 93]

pathetic

either a cb radio or mobile phone would probably be better.

[Colin Critch]

I bet the software will cost more than the hardware

I bet the software will cost more than the hardware unless there is an itrash app for 50p.

[Graham Marsden]

Meanwhile...

... whilst he's sitting there waiting for the rest of the crew to get the rubbish on board, the guy who gets to drive the Bin Lorry will be playing Angry Birds...

[Charles Parker]

Save £170k

Alternatively, they could save £170k by in-sourcing then its a fixed cost per year for a crew and a dustcart. Sort of like the old days when ctax was cheap and you got a form of service compared to these days when you get flannel and call centres.

[DrXym]

Such a waste of money.

A £100 phone would be capable of running an app that scans bins, plots GPS, sends real time messages and all the rest.

[g e]

So how much more for the software?

Or do these things come as standard with a Realtime Binman(tm) app with a trendy name like REFUSENIK or something fun & quirky?

[Nuke]

They Go Back for Missed Bin?? WTF??

They've gotta be kidding. I have lived in quite a few different boroughs and there is no way that bin men would ever go back for a missed bin, or a bin that was not in the exact right place at the right time.

If it ain't there at the right time in the right place then you can f#@k off and wait till next week.

[g e]

Or they'll get nicked

Something like...

From: [e-mail]

To: [e-mail]

Sorry boss, it just fell into the crusher, it's really hard to hold with the gloves on.

Binman Bill

Sent from my iPad

[davefb]

what good is a cb radio?

you'd have to have an employee at the other end sat waiting for any reports.

I don't get what the hassle is, the hassle should be if the apps on the devices aren't fit for purpose ( like the one mentioned where it requires a database connection at the time, that's obviously not fit for purpose)..

Seems like an interesting idea and even an iPad is a bit of a tiny splash compared to what it potentially COULD save...

[Winkypop]

Bin collection is a one man game here

Bin is out, it gets collected by mechanical grabber on truck

Bin is not out, not so much.

Not an iPad or a pair of gloves to be seen.

[Anonymous Coward]

iPad, yes of course

& not a £150 android tablet that would do the exact same job.

What a crock!

[Anonymous Coward]

dear reg, stop requiring a title

Why exactly do they need realtime updates and not just a map? People's houses don't move around mysteriously in the night!

[Anonymous Coward]

People's houses don't move around mysteriously in the night!

Oh yes they do.

(Deep inhale)

[Sandy Ritchie]

good thinking Bury!

Thats all I can say!

What people don't seem to realise its its gallons per mile for bin lorries, and that each bin lorry has 3 (minimum) staff on board to deal with driving and collection. So dealing with missed bins is an expensive business.

A few ipads save tens of thousands and yet folk are mumping about £9k wasted! You wouldn't consider it a waste if your bin was accidentally missed (or you were just too slow it putting it out in the morning and lied to the council to get them back out) and the bin lorry was back round 10mins after you phoned as they were still in the area.

The council where I work buy laptops, because a laptop is a fully featured PC and then call it mobile working, even though your tied to a desk and a CAT5 point, or maybe a wi-fi point in the canteen! When for less money they could have virtualised the desktop environment, buy a cheap 3g enabled tablet and job done.... genuine mobile working, a gucci device in your office provided man bag!

Its just double standards with private industry, they virtualise and provide staff with tablets and its forward thinking and enabling, a council does it and they are just wasting money!

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps

It's because they are!

Obviously it depends what work you are doing, but tablets aren't suited to what I call work and I doubt are really quite suited to this.

Our council doesn't miss bins (or so they claim) and so don't do recollections. Probably saves a fortune in fuel and labour even if it does irritate people (at least a few of whom will have forgotten to put it out).

There doesn't seem to be a huge amount of call for a tablet in this either, yes it'd be great it the bin lorry was back 10 mins after you phoned but most people probably won't notice until long after the lorry has left the area. At that point the realtime side of the system becomes completely pointless.

[Tim Almond]

Private Industry

<i>Its just double standards with private industry, they virtualise and provide staff with tablets and its forward thinking and enabling, a council does it and they are just wasting money!</i>

What businesses? I've worked for 4 clients in the past 12 months, and amongst them (total of 700-odd staff) there was 1 iPad and that was because that client sold stuff through the app store, so needed to build and test their app.

Other than a few hipster design agencies, no-one is buying iPads. They're expensive, locked-down, inflexible and impractical. Businesses are still running Windows, Outlook, Active Directory, Exchange, Office and all that stuff.

[Gradivus]

High tech over common sense

Hmm.

The cheapest 3G iPad is £499. Plus the bespoke cost of designing, writing and implementing an appropriate app, (there aren't many BuryBins apps on the App Store), maintaing that app, training the bin men to use the app, training the office-based staff to update the data in the app, plus testing, plus ongoing data networking costs, plus.... I reckon the quoted £9k is a very serious underestimate of the overall cost.

Conversely, you can buy a mobile phone for £4.95 plus a £10 top-up. No apps, no IT costs, no training, no data networking costs apart from another £10 top-up every few months.

And how does the office-based council officer find out about a missed bin? The householder telephones him. So the office-based council officer rings the bin wagon driver and says, "Bob, you've missed no 27 Alexander Street. Pop back and get it can you, please?". And would that be quicker than updating an IT-iPad-app-based, town-wide, 3G, broadcast system? Yes it would.

So a few £4.95 mobiles would save the "tens of thousands" that you quote, AND it would save the £9k that so many of us are 'mumping about'.

High tech solutions are rarely the answer to low tech problems.

[Blubster]

£9k spunked on fondleslabs could save £170k

Fantastic. Nearly came in my pants too when I read that headline :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

More council waste.

Binmen should drive the truck and collect the bins and that it! They should be paid 18-20K per year for this job, not 28K + overtime as they are currently paid. How long will an ipod last in the hands of a burly dustbin man, about 2-3 days.

[Kenno]

Well paid? Not anymore

Erm binmen aren't paid 28K...

A few years ago Bury council after losing the equal pay case for women, cut almost ALL salaries under 44K

http://www.burytimes.co.uk/news/burynews/3576565.Council_workers_facing_massive_wage_cuts/

The chiefs were exempted from this though..

Anyway binmen in Bury are not paid 18-20K. However they are paid above min wage £6.02 an hour. you can see the jobs advertised on the job centre website every so often.

[Mendy]

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

I've implemented similar things in a former life.

A typical authority could be responsible for collecting waste from thousands of streets, each of which needs assigning to a particular route to be done by a particular truck on a particular schedule. There could be special notes about where to find the bins for certain properties or warnings based on past experience. Some comments have suggested paper maps and it's quite possible this is what they do now but it can be a full time job keeping these up to date (costing more than the cost of the technology). For bin collection failure to keep these manual records up to date is self-correcting as people will complain if they're missed, in other areas such as safety inspections omissions can go some time without being noticed.

If the truck has an up to date list of the route (perhaps operating like a 'TomTom') then it makes things a lot simpler. It also means that there is less reliance on local knowledge which allows routes to be reassigned and can cut down on the amount of overtime. There is also the potential to look at route optimisation to save time and petrol. It could also be used to allow the operators to record issues they've spotted that they can't deal with themselves such as graffiti or fly-tipping.

As to the hardware itself councils tend to be split between those that will only buy mil-spec (Toughbooks etc.) and those which will buy general consumer kit. While the more expensive kit is 'better' it can cost thousands more than an equivilent off the shelf product and based on the experiences of peers consumer kit seems to be fine, especially if you have a few spares. Another thing to remember is that it's not just managers who like shiny gadgets, half the battle in one of these projects is getting the workers to take to using the technology and if an Apple product can help with this it's a plus.

[Gradivus]

Wouldn't 22 basic mobile phones achieve the same result?

Wouldn't 22 basic mobile phones achieve the same result?

Or do the council officers and bin men lack the power of speech?