City of Fort St. John

The City of Fort St. John, in collaboration with Prairie Robotics and GFL, launched a citywide recycling education strategy in May 2022 to reduce contamination. 

By using Prairie Robotics’ web portal with optional contamination review functionality, the City’s bylaw officers could identify additional contaminants like lamps and carpets, reducing the need for manual cart audits. 
The integration with ReCollect enabled faster digital notifications to households, complementing traditional postcards. In the 6 weeks after launching the ReCollect integration over 15,000 audits were completed resulting in 1,100 personalized notifications sent both as physical postcards and digitally. By pairing the two types of education the City has been able to engage residents on the issue of recycling contamination as one member of the household may bring in the mail but another is signed up for ReCollect notifications.

By adopting a comprehensive curbside contamination reduction strategy the City achieved it's lowest contamination to date achieving just 3% of all items being incorrectly sorted.