Safety is Renewi’s #1 priority.
Nothing matters more than having our people return home safe every day. One of the risks that our colleagues face is the carelessly discarded gas bottles in waste. They’re like ticking bombs: if one of them ends up inside a crusher, it explodes.
The consequence? Damages to our machines, potential injuries to our people and millions of euros lost for the most severe fires. A solution to this issue came from Viu More, an industrial Artificial Intelligence (AI) integrator from Ghent, Belgium.
Viu More had an idea: train an AI software to identify gas tanks inside mixed waste streams using live cameras. This innovative concept started from a pilot and is set to operate in ten Belgian sites to track gas tanks inside waste with 95-99% accuracy.
But it doesn’t stop there! After this successful project, Viu More has also begun working on how to better detect the type of waste inside our streams. By knowing what flows through our sites, we can improve our processes, increase the recycled materials’ quality, help our clients better sort waste and better safeguard our people.
And do you know who has a lot to share about this topic?
Meet Jan!
Jan Meynen, Viu More’s CEO, joined us today to answer our questions and tell us more about the partnership with Renewi.
Jan Meynen
Thank you for your time, Jan. Why did Viu More choose Renewi as a partner?
“I didn’t know much about recycling in 2019. Then I met Philip Heylen [Director of Materials at Renewi, ed.] during a visit to Renewi’s site in Ghent. He invited me to his office and showed me how Renewi collects waste, processes it, and creates secondary raw materials. I was amazed! I didn’t know how companies like Renewi made a profit from recycling. Later, he told me about the issues caused by carelessly discarded gas bottles. Whenever one explodes, it heavily impacts the organisation. So, we came out with the idea of finding gas bottles with increased accuracy using AI. After the management approved and financed the pilot project, the operators began throwing empty gas bottles in the waste streams. We set up cameras to take pictures of the stream to train the AI to detect gas bottles. In the first week, we achieved an accuracy of 70%. In the next four weeks, we raised it to 90%. This meant that if we trained a system to track 100 of the most common gas bottles, we had a safety tool in our hands. Renewi’s management loved it and ordered it for ten sites.”
How did Renewi assist you in developing the project further?
“Transparency and friendliness ensued between Viu More and Renewi since the beginning. For instance, we wanted to talk to the operators and hear first-hand about the dangers they face. Philip [Heylen, ed.] happily allowed it. We feared they would have opposed installing cameras to monitor the sites 24/7 but, once we showed that we wanted to help and protect their lives, they were happy to cooperate. Transparency has been a key component between Viu More and Renewi since day one.”
At which point was Renewi’s expertise key for the success of this project?
“They gave us the insights into their processes, the management’s priorities, how the board looks at innovation and why sustainability matters so much at Renewi. These items helped to co-create an effective solution and turned Renewi into a reference point for our growth. Especially for items we like, such as the focus on people. Besides, associating our brand to Renewi is helping to put Viu More on the map and scaling our company up.”
What’s coming next for this partnership?
“We plan to expand our services to Renewi’s sites in the Netherlands. The best part about our collaboration with Renewi is that we now have a working system that can be further expanded. For instance, we put two cameras on two trucks to track what waste they gather when unloading plastic containers. We observed that lots of inappropriate materials get carelessly tossed inside them. This gave us the idea to start tracking the waste inside Renewi’s streams to optimise the output of secondary raw materials and, consequently, Renewi is planning to install cameras on 200 trucks in Belgium. I’m very proud of what we achieved so far with Renewi and, if I look at the future, there are still a lot of possibilities ahead.”
Share your innovative ideaAre you or your organisation interested in circularity and have an innovative solution? Do you wish to implement it at a commercial scale? At Renewi, we’d love to hear from you! Any solution is welcome, and we would love to start with those with the highest and direct impact. Can we help to scale your solution? |
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