With help from Penn State's Pennsylvania Technical Assistance Program (PENNTAP), Cambria County's Solid Waste Management Authority has become the first in the state to adopt hand-held computers to track recycling operations in the field.
"Our drivers have been using a palmtop computer on their recycling pick up routes for about six months now," said Tanya McCoy-Caretti, executive director of the waste authority. "We figure that, from the data collection and data entry standpoint, we save at least 12 hours per week."
By McCoy-Caretti's calculations that means that they have already saved well over the original $1,000 hardware and software cost and are reaping increased productivity, more accurate records on the quality of their recyclables and improved ways to track and target their educational activities.
Cambria County offers 10 collection sites to recycle newspaper, clear glass and metal. Residents bring their recyclables to these sites and once each week, Michael Lieb, collections supervisor for the solid waste authority, comes by with a truck to pick them up. He collects only one type of material on a given day and, before he had the palmtop, used a pencil and paper to record the amount and condition of the load at each site before taking it to a weigh station. In those days, when Lieb got back to the office after making the rounds on his route he had to spend an additional 35 minutes or more each day re-entering the collected data into the office computer.
"My thought was UPS has a hand-held data collection device. Pepsi delivery personnel do too," said McCoy-Caretti. "So, the technology has to be out there. And that's when I went to Ralph at PENNTAP."
Ralph Caretti, a PENNTAP senior technical specialist based at University Park, also just happens to be Tanya's brother-in-law. In his job at PENNTAP, Caretti provides computer advice and direct hands-on assistance, free of charge, to help Pennsylvania business and industry improve their competitiveness.
"It took only about a week to find a suitable palmtop that could do the job and to pick database software, structure it, write an application and then teach the system to Mike Lieb," Caretti said.
"For somebody like me who's not a computer whiz, I found it to be relatively simple," Lieb said. "It's very similar to the Windows program I was using in the office."
Now, at the collection sites, Lieb simply pulls down a menu on the palmtop's screen and points to the name of the site, the material he is picking up, the amount and then notes any contamination. At the end of the day, when he returns to the office, he places the palmtop in its cradle and it automatically downloads the data into the office computer where figures can be double checked against the records supplied by the weigh station. More accurate records makes for more accurate payments, said McCoy-Caretti. She noted that the system has other benefits, too.
"When the driver is out there collecting material from 10 different sites, he may see that at one site, for example, the glass bin is contaminated with a lot of plastic. Or, at another site, the paper in the bin is wet. With that information over a period of time, I can target my educational efforts," McCoy-Caretti said.
McCoy-Caretti recently described the new program at a workshop for representatives of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the Professional Recyclers of Pennsylvania. As a result, other communities throughout the state have indicated an interest.