City of Berkeley chooses AMCS software for waste and recycling

California’s Berkeley Public Works Department Zero Waste Commission has signed on to use the AMCS Platform to modernize and unify its Zero Waste operation.

According to AMCS, with U.S. headquarters in Boston, its AMCS Platform best fit the requirements of the city’s Zero Waste division and scored highest in the city’s evaluation criteria.

Berkeley, located 10 miles northeast of San Francisco, is a densely populated city of more than 118,000 residents. The city is defined to a large degree, culturally and economically, by the presence of the University of California campus. As such, the city prides itself on being progressive, especially as it relates to the environment.

The city’s Zero Waste philosophy adheres to the definition adopted by the Zero Waste International Alliance (ZWIA), “Zero waste means designing and managing products and processes to systematically avoid and eliminate the volume and toxicity of waste and materials, conserve and recover all resources and not to burn or bury them.”

The city of Berkeley established the Zero Waste Commission to help divert waste from its landfill and maximize the benefits of recycling. In addition, a municipal transfer station and landfill, the commission operates a 32-truck fleet to service the community’s waste and recycling operations.

The program has been wrestling with a legacy billing and work order system, supplemented by—but not integrated with—its customer relationship management (CRM) system. After long-term internal and third-party evaluation of its technology needs, the existing solution was deemed outdated, inadequate and incapable of providing functionality for running a modern-day zero-waste program.

The inefficiencies in business workflow, delayed community response times, and limited reporting and analysis capabilities hampered efforts to manage city refuse, recycling and organics collection effectively, according to the city. In addition, the legacy tools required heavy support from its IT staff.

According to AMCS, the AMCS Platform will help alleviate inefficiencies through some of the following measures:

• It will broaden constituent self-service capabilities, including online bill payment, and the AMCS self-service customer portal will empower residents and other stakeholders to access and manage their accounts online, 24/7. Via the portal, users will be able to manage and safely pay invoices, sign up for autopay, make order requests and changes, update their account information and view their account history.
  

• It will allow the city to optimize waste routes and provide real-time mobile communications. The AMCS Mobile solution also provides GPS-based routes that are preplanned and distributed to drivers on mobile devices. Drivers will use an advanced point-and-click interface to prevent missed pickups and provide proof of service for invoicing. Should route conditions, such as traffic jams, arise and threaten to slow progress, automatic rerouting will help improve efficiency. Live interaction between the office and drivers also will enable the city to update orders in real-time, eliminating the need for extra trips or paper orders. These new efficiencies will bring significant reductions in fuel and labor costs and improvement in vehicle mileage and emissions, supporting the city’s reduction of carbon emissions efforts and its Climate Change Action Plan.
  

• The AMCS integration also will help improve business processes based on best practices, improve business and system integration, eliminate duplicate data entry and improve access to data and user-friendly reporting tools. The AMCS Enterprise Management solution will streamline all processes across the business into one system with end-to-end visibility using automation to maximize efficiency.