OnePlus lowers hauling costs for supermarket chain

Supermarket chains King Soopers and City Market, two western United States subsidiaries of Ohio-based Kroger, say waste bin monitors supplied by OnePlus have allowed a 20 percent reduction in waste and recycling pickups.

The two chains have some 150 locations in Colorado and Wyoming, offering shoppers a range of products including groceries, pharmaceuticals, pet products and vehicle fuel.

Kroger brands, King Soopers and City Market say they have “an unwavering commitment to moving the industry forward in the area of sustainability.” Initiatives undertaken by the two stores include a sustainability program (now in its 10th edition) that has led to several awards, including three U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Food Waste Recovery awards for leadership, innovation and education and outreach.

With 150 locations, a substantial amount of waste and recyclables are generated. As a result, hauling costs can be high, and ensuring there is always capacity in each location’s waste compactor can be difficult. With scheduled compactor pickups in place, the chances of pickups occurring at exactly the right time could be difficult, meaning that either unnecessary hauls were being made, or compactors were over-filled by the time a scheduled haul arrived.

Managers of the two chains have turned to the OnePlus Fullness Monitor, which uses pressure-sensing technology and wireless communications to measure and report a compactor’s fullness level. Positioned close to a waste compactor and remotely configured to take reports at times determined by the client, the Fullness Monitor then communicates with the second element of the OnePlus system, the WasteForce platform.

WasteForce uses fullness report data to provide a “control center” view of all compactor fullness levels within a client’s operation. The system is designed to ensure that available waste capacity data is visible at all times and manual checking of compactors is no longer required, OnePlus says. By always knowing the available space for waste, the risk of unhygienic overflowing compactors also should be eliminated.

Northbrook, Illinois-based OnePlus, which also has European operations in Dublin, says WasteForce also communicates directly with client haulers to ensure that pickups are made only when compactors are full. This results in “a significant reduction in unnecessary hauling costs and takes the hassle of constantly requesting hauls off the onsite manager’s shoulders,” the company says. Detailed reporting tools have been designed to allow clients to apply OnePlus waste intelligence to their environmental sustainability strategy, says the firm.

An environmental benefit is created by optimizing compactor hauls, meaning there are less trucks on the road, resulting in a lower carbon footprint, adds OnePlus.

As of March 2017, King Soopers and City Market have adopted OnePlus compactor monitoring at more than 50 locations in Colorado. Both the participating stores and central management can check compactor fullness levels remotely, helping ensure that waste and recycling capacity is always available.

Direct alerts between the OnePlus platform and contracted waste haulers have “eliminated unnecessary visits and led to a move away from scheduled hauls,” according to OnePlus. As a result, compactor hauls have been reduced by approximately 20 percent across 50 locations.

“As a Kroger brand, our commitment to a more environmentally sustainable way of working has continued to grow year on year,” says Ralph Powell, reclamation manager at King Soopers, who has overseen the implementation of OnePlus technology since 2009. “By investing in OnePlus Systems, we have not only become more sustainable and informed about our waste streams, we have cut out the unnecessary costs in our waste hauling requirements. By knowing more about our waste, we can make better strategic decisions. And by saving more, we can reallocate those savings to our other sustainability initiatives. The OnePlus solution has been a complete success.”