Blog posts about WasteWorks

Merton Council is the latest in a growing number of local authorities to use WasteWorks for providing self-service online access to residential waste services.

SocietyWorks has launched a brand new installation of WasteWorks for Merton Council, including integration into three of the Council’s systems to enable a seamless flow of data and ensure residents can access up-to-date information on-demand.

Branded to complement Merton Council’s existing online environment, WasteWorks enables residents to self-serve information about the waste services associated with their property, including checking their bin days, monitoring the status of their collections and reporting problems such as missed collections or damage once the collection round is completed.

Users can also request new or extra containers, request assisted collections and book, subscribe to and pay for green and bulky waste collections using the service.

Data on collections is surfaced for users via integration with the Selected Interventions Echo in-cab system, used by the Council’s waste services provider Veolia. The service is also integrated into the Council’s own CRM system, powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365, to enable council staff to manage all reports and requests from a central system. Meanwhile, payments for one-off or subscription services are handled through integration with Adelante SmartPay.

WasteWorks was launched in 2021 and designed in collaboration with Bromley Council, where it produced a 40% drop in unnecessary contact within the first few months of launching and a continual rise in subscriptions to waste services. Shortlisted for the Public/Private Partnership award at the LGC Awards 2022, the solution aims to reduce avoidable contact and simplify access to waste services.

SocietyWorks is already partnered with Merton Council for the provision of its street, highway and environment reporting service, which has been powered by FixMyStreet Pro since 2021. 

Maureen McKean, Customer Access Point Team Leader at Merton Council, said: “The transition to WasteWorks was pretty much seamless and the level of support during the go live period superb. Any issues were rapidly dealt with. Users have been able to adapt to the new process well.”

Angela Dixon, Managing Director at SocietyWorks, said: “The implementation of WasteWorks marks a new chapter in our partnership with Merton, and as a small, not-for-profit supplier we are delighted to have Merton’s trust in supporting them with another service area transition. We look forward to seeing the impact WasteWorks has in the borough.”

–

Find out more about WasteWorks.

We’re delighted to be providing the London Borough of Bexley with a dedicated installation of WasteWorks, our integrated front-end residential waste portal.

We are working in partnership with Bexley using agile methodologies to provide a phased roll out of WasteWorks.

The first phase of this project delivers the initial functionality of the service, including an API integration into the Council’s in-cab system, which is provided by Whitespace Work Software. This enables residents to check their bin days on-demand, and report missed collections within specified timeframes (e.g. only after the waste crew has completed its round).

Following this, future phases of the project will introduce functionality including bulky and green garden waste subscriptions, new container and assisted collection requests, clinical waste collections and more. 

WasteWorks is the second SocietyWorks solution chosen by Bexley, where FixMyStreet Pro has been providing an easy way for residents to report local street, highway and environment problems since 2019. The two services will sit alongside each other, sharing the same accessible and user-friendly design.

Rob Flicker, Project Lead and Digital Manager at London Borough of Bexley, said: “Bexley were looking for a new Waste solution to improve our resident journey, providing an easy-to-use reporting tool and full integration with our Waste Management system. We evaluated several different options and selected WasteWorks as the best fit for Bexley.

“The first phase of the project delivered by SocietyWorks was to provide residents with a Bin Collection Day look up together with the ability to report Missed Bins as part of the new functionality. The SocietyWorks team have delivered an excellent product that provides Bexley’s residents with an easy-to-use reporting tool and displays clear real-time status updates for this service.

“I would like to take the opportunity to thank the SocietyWorks Team for getting the WasteWorks solution live on-time and on-budget. I am looking forward to working with them to implement the Garden Waste and Replacement Containers services for the next phase of this project implementation.”

Angela Dixon, Managing Director at SocietyWorks, said: “Providing simple, self-service digital access to residential waste services is essential for local authorities looking to improve service delivery while keeping costs down. We’re so pleased to be working with the team at Bexley on this project, and look forward to seeing the impact WasteWorks makes.”

Mike Nicholls, Chief Commercial Officer at Whitespace Work Software, said: “Whitespace Work Software plays a crucial role in our mission to modernise waste management services for the London Borough of Bexley. Through API integration into the WasteWorks portal, residents will benefit from seamless access to vital information regarding bin days and reporting missed collections.”

About WasteWorks

WasteWorks launched in 2021 and was co-designed with the London Borough of Bromley, where its intelligent features have helped the Council to achieve a 40% drop in avoidable customer contacts about waste services.

Shortlisted for the Public/Private Partnership Award at the LGC Awards 2022, WasteWorks is designed as a Progressive Web App (PWA). This means it functions beautifully on any device, and can be downloaded to mobile devices to be used as an app, without the need to maintain a separate app codebase.

Find out more about WasteWorks here.

At SocietyWorks we believe in transparency. One of the ways we live this value is by working in the open, and giving our team members space on our blog to write about what they’re working on, something they’re interested in or even perhaps a mistake or challenge they’ve learned from.

In this blog post our Head of Development, Matthew Somerville, writes about a new waste container generator for our WasteWorks solution which uses CSS to make it easier to generate waste images tailored to individual councils’ branding and bin types.

—

WasteWorks is in use by a number of different councils, all of which have their own types of bin, in various colours and sizes (you can see a large array of photos of bins in use by local councils at the lovely govbins.uk site). An image of each type of bin associated with a property is displayed to residents from the WasteWorks homepage.

Our designer Lucas came up with some nice simple iconography for us to use on bin day pages, including domestic wheelie bins, communal bins, sacks and boxes. When we’ve had a new client, whose bins are differently coloured to any previous council, Lucas has been providing us with new PNG images to match the bins the council uses, exported from the source vector images. As well as the right colours, each PNG had to be provided at two different sizes, to work with high-resolution displays, and so we’ve built up a small collection of such bin images over the years.

These pictures only vary by colour (and the presence of a recycling logo), so I wondered if there was a better way we could generate these images. SVGs are vector graphics – they scale to any resolution, and importantly for this can be styled with CSS, the same mechanism used to style a web page. CSS also has “variables”, where you can define e.g. a variable to be a particular colour, and then use that variable in a different part of the document (or SVG image).

Lucas and I worked together to come up with SVGs for the various containers, which instead of specifying any fill colours directly, used one or more CSS variables to specify the colours. For the recycling logo, we set a variable for the opacity of the logo – defaulting to 0, so invisible, but we can set it to 1 to have it appear.

We’ve added a page to our user manual where you can play around with the colour of our new bin images in real time:
https://www.societyworks.org/manuals/wasteworks/container-picture-generator/ :-)

More technical details

The header of our domestic wheelie bin SVG looks something like this:

<svg class="waste-service-image">
 <style>
  .wheel { fill: #333333; }
  .main { fill: var(--primary-color, var(--default-color)); }
  .lid { fill: var(--lid-color, var(--primary-color, var(--default-color))); }
  .recycling-logo { fill: #ffffff; opacity: var(--recycling-logo, 0); }
 </style>
 ...

See that the CSS uses the var() fallback parameter so that the lid colour will e.g. default to the primary colour if not specified.

We used CSS mix-blend-modes in order to have shadows and highlights that would work regardless of the colour they were placed on top of; here’s an example shadow:

<g style="mix-blend-mode:multiply" opacity="0.12">
  <path fill="black" d="M95.1227 90.7581L120.495 681.301H79.3654L50.9626 90.7581H95.1227Z">
</g>

Then when we embed an SVG in someone’s bin day page, the web page itself, outside the image, can specify what colour to use by setting the corresponding CSS variable, and the picture will then appear in the right colours. When we have a new bin colour, we don’t need to create a new image, only set the right colour.

Here’s the outline of an SVG on a bin day page, for a grey bin with a blue lid, showing the recycling logo:

<span style="--primary-color: #767472; --lid-color: #00A6D2; --recycling-logo: 1;">
 <svg class="waste-service-image">
  <style>
   [... style as above ...]
  </style>
  [...]
 </svg>
</span>

As an organisation we talk a lot about how our civic tech products are able to flex around individual authorities’ needs. This is not something we say because it sounds good; it is a commitment from us.

Take our residential waste management portal WasteWorks as an example. 

A waste service that works for everyone

WasteWorks is a front-end SaaS product which integrates with in-cab systems to simplify online access to all waste services associated with a property’s address, such as checking your bin days, ordering a new container or reporting a problem with a collection.

We built the core WasteWorks service in 2021 in collaboration with the London Borough of Bromley, who wanted to reduce the amount of unnecessary contact they were receiving about residential waste services caused by their existing processes. 

With that goal in mind, we equipped WasteWorks with the ability to not only let residents self-serve up-to-date information about their waste collections (including being able to download a live schedule to their device’s calendar), but also to ensure that reports of, for example, missed collections can only be made after the crew has completed their rounds.

Since launching for Bromley, WasteWorks has consistently achieved a 40% drop in unnecessary contact, and made the final of the LGC Awards 2022 in the Public/Private Partnership category. 

As more authorities have adopted the service, we have continued to add new functionality in alignment with the needs of our community of users, including:

• Green garden waste subscriptions – enabling residents to subscribe to and pay for green waste collections
• Bulky waste collection bookings – residents can book and pay for a one-off collection or subscribe to repeat collections if required
• Small item collections – take bookings for the collection of small items, such as batteries and textiles
• Assisted collection requests – let residents request help from your waste crew with their bin collection(s)
• New container payments – take payments for new containers when requested by residents

The implementation of these features differs per council, adapting to their different rules, workflows and seasonal circumstances. 

For example, where an authority needs to understand what and how many containers a property already has we are able to add in extra questions to gather this information.

In other instances, where an authority experiences shortages of sacks, we are able to give council staff the ability to temporarily switch off orders and communicate transparently. 

The future

Each council using WasteWorks has made it their own, with slightly different configurations to make it exactly what they need.

We can facilitate this because our software is built with local authority differences in mind. We have learned from delivering our long-running street and environment reporting service FixMyStreet Pro across over 30 authorities that even when the goal is the same, the approach can differ. We embed that flexibility into all of our products.

In terms of new developments, we will continue to be led by our users (both residents and staff) following our citizen-centred design principles. User groups enable us to bring everyone together to discuss ideas, while customers have the opportunity to log suggestions through our helpdesk service at any time. 

Waste is a service area that will be subject to much change over the coming years in response to new regulations and legislation aimed at helping us respond to climate change.  

However requirements change, we will be there to support our local authority clients along the journey.

–

If you’d like a conversation about transforming online access to residential waste services with scalable open source software, get in touch.

–

Image: Abel Matthew via Pexels

Following the recent implementation of WasteWorks in the London boroughs of Kingston and Sutton, both councils’ versions of the service can now be used by residents to book bulky waste collections online.

WasteWorks was chosen by Kingston and Sutton in 2022 as part of a programme of ongoing improvements to residential waste services for both boroughs. The service is already used by residents to easily and conveniently access information about their bin days, report problems with collections, request new containers and subscribe to green waste collections.

The addition of the bulky waste collection functionality incorporates another aspect of the councils’ waste service into WasteWorks’ user-friendly interface, which was designed in collaboration with Bromley Council to simplify access to residential waste online and reduce avoidable customer contact.

For Kingston and Sutton, WasteWorks is integrated with the Selected Interventions Echo in-cab system, which is used by Veolia, the waste contractor for both councils. This integration enables a seamless two-way flow of data between residents and Veolia, sharing up-to-date information about waste collections, such as when a bin will next be collected, or why a collection was missed, and enabling residents to reserve available collection slots for bulky waste.

To allow residents to pay for their collections within the same workflow, WasteWorks is also integrated with the Capita Pay 360 payment system for Kingston, and the Barclaycard system for Sutton. 

Residents can also use WasteWorks to report a missed bulky collection and submit cancellation requests.

Angela Dixon, Managing Director at SocietyWorks, said: “The delivery of WasteWorks for Kingston and Sutton has been a significant collaborative effort between SocietyWorks, Kingston and Sutton, Selected Interventions and Veolia. All parties share a dedication to improving waste services for residents, and we are thrilled to be able to support them with this with scalable, citizen-centred technology.” 

Find out more about WasteWorks here. 

Staff users of our FixMyStreet Pro and WasteWorks solutions will now benefit from much faster data export downloads thanks to a new update we’ve made to the export functionality. Exports should now be ready to start downloading within a short space of time.

The faster download speeds apply to both user access through the dashboard web page, or programmatic access via the API, making it particularly useful for those of our clients which use Power BI to track performance levels. 

In order to be performant, data is now pre-generated overnight ready for export, so it’s worth noting the CSV export won’t include information from the current day.

Standard data exports contain all the information about reports or requests made via FixMyStreet Pro and/or WasteWorks, including categories, states and device types, and can be filtered by date, ward, category, status and administrator role. Exports can also be customised according to the requirements of individual clients.

If you’re a client of FixMyStreet Pro or WasteWorks and would like any help with data exports, please open a ticket via the support desk system.

Or if you’re interested in finding out more about our solutions, get in touch. 

–

Image: Carlos Muza

In collaboration with Brent Council we have added some new functionality to WasteWorks which enables residents to book a waste collection for small items including batteries and textiles.

WasteWorks is our front end residential waste platform designed with and for councils to provide simple online access for residents to information about their waste collections. It has the flexibility not just to integrate with any in-cab system or payment provider, but to also easily incorporate extra elements of a waste service as required by councils, including bulky waste, green garden waste, assisted collections, and now small items collections.

The new small items collection functionality was built for Brent Council’s installation of WasteWorks. Now, along with being able to view and download their waste collection schedules, report problems, request new containers and pay for garden waste subscriptions, residents in Brent can also use WasteWorks to access the council’s free bookable small items collection service. 

Integrated with the Selected Interventions Echo in-cab system used by Brent Council’s waste contractor Veolia, WasteWorks takes residents through an intuitive request workflow within which they can select from a list of items included in the small items collection service and book a time slot according to availability. Each request created via WasteWorks is automatically sent into Echo for staff and contractors to manage directly.

Using this feature, residents can also cancel a booking for a small item collection, or report that a collection has been missed. The integration between WasteWorks and Echo will allow the council to keep residents informed on the progress of their requests and reports.

Councillor Krupa Sheth, Cabinet Member for Environment, Infrastructure, and Climate Action, said: “We want to make it as easy as possible for residents to get rid of your items in the most environmentally friendly way possible, as well as making it easy as possible. I welcome this partnership and look forward to working with SocietyWorks on this service.”

Angela Dixon, Managing Director at SocietyWorks said: “We take pride in the fact that each of our digital solutions is developed in collaboration with councils. This new feature of WasteWorks built in partnership with Brent Council is another great example of how the product continues to grow in line with the needs of councils and their residents.”

Find out more about WasteWorks or if you’re an existing WasteWorks client and you’d like to use this new feature please speak to your account manager.

Working in partnership with Bromley Council, we have added some new functionality to the Council’s installation of our WasteWorks solution to enable residents to book bulky waste collections online.

WasteWorks was co-designed with Bromley and introduced in the Borough in 2021 as a smart and user-friendly way for residents to access residential waste services online. Residents already use the service to check their bin days, report a problem with a collection, request a new or extra container and subscribe to green waste collections. 

By integrating with existing systems, WasteWorks creates a consistent front door to all aspects of a council’s waste service, sharing information between residents, contractors and back again, which has already achieved a 40% drop in avoidable customer contact for Bromley.

Integrated with the Selected Interventions Echo in-cab system, which is used by Bromley’s waste contractor Veolia, as well as with the Capita Pay 360 payment system, residents can now also use WasteWorks to book and pay for collections for residential bulky waste items, such as carpets, furniture and white goods.

Residents wanting to use the service will be guided through a simple and intuitive workflow which enables them to select the type of item to be collected, reserve an available time slot and pay for the collection. WasteWorks can also handle cancellation and refund requests, as well as missed collection reports.

Jim Cowan, Head of Neighbourhood Management at the London Borough of Bromley said: “Placing the bulky waste collection service onto the WasteWorks platform is another step in making access to our services even better for our residents. Access to waste collection information, recycling container orders, enquiries and bulky waste bookings is now a one stop shop. 

“Moving from the existing server platform for bulky waste to cloud through WasteWorks is a key element of Bromley’s digital transformation plan, and the integration into Veolia’s Echo logistic system improves administration and fleet efficiency – just two of the many reasons why working with our partner SocietyWorks has yet again given us the outcome we desired”.  

Angela Dixon, Managing Director at SocietyWorks, said: “The addition of the bulky waste functionality marks another milestone in our partnership with Bromley Council. 

“The team at Bromley have been involved in the development of WasteWorks from day one, and we’re proud to support them with another innovative service transition that meets the needs of residents.”

Find out more about WasteWorks here.

Through integration with in-cab systems, our front-end residential waste solution WasteWorks can retrieve updates and display them to residents in a user-friendly way. 

These updates are intended to preempt common questions residents might have about their waste collections to reduce the need for them to contact the council via phone or email. 

Depending on the type of information available within the in-cab system, updates can relate to anything from sharing when a resident’s bin will next be collected to confirming that a collection has happened or explaining why a collection was unsuccessful.

In doing this, councils can eliminate avoidable customer contact and its associated costs by enabling residents to self-serve key, time-sensitive information. 

How does preemptive messaging work via WasteWorks?

Updates are retrieved via API integration with in-cab systems and can be served as messages to users in a number of ways.

For example, if a resident goes to report that their collection has been missed and the in-cab system knows the reason is because there was a vehicle obstructing the road, messaging can be displayed to inform the resident of this and explain next steps.

Equally, messaging can be displayed to explain that no collection was carried out at an address because the waste was not presented, and the missed collection report form can be disabled until the next collection round has begun. 

Additionally, councils may want to share messaging on the homepage of their WasteWorks service about planned changes to collection schedules in advance of bank holidays, so that residents know what to expect.

Notifying residents of changes to bin collection schedules

In the event of councils needing to make changes to scheduled collections, this information is best shared with residents before they need to go looking for it.

WasteWorks gives residents the ability to download the collection schedule for their property to their device’s calendar. Any changes made to the schedule will be reflected directly and automatically. 

It’s also possible to integrate the service with GOV.UK Notify to send notifications to residents via text or email about waste collections. 

–

Want to learn more about WasteWorks? There’s more information here, or why not book a short demo with the team.

–

Image: Centre for Ageing Better

Brent Council is working with SocietyWorks to improve the online experience for residents when contacting the authority about two of its most in-demand services: residential waste and street and environment reporting.   

Residents in Brent can now make use of two new digital portals, both powered by SocietyWorks’ citizen-centred technology: one for making waste-related requests, reports and payments online, using WasteWorks; the other for reporting street and environmental problems, using FixMyStreet Pro.

Branded to look exactly like the rest of Brent Council’s online environment and integrated directly with the Council’s existing asset, in-cab and payment systems, both WasteWorks and FixMyStreet Pro have enabled the council to facilitate a smooth transition for residents and staff, with no interruption to delivery. These integrations also permit information to be shared to and from residents, the Council and its contractors to help keep the feedback loop closed and improve resident satisfaction.

Brent Council’s dedicated instance of WasteWorks simplifies access to waste services online by providing one front door for all transactions, such as reporting a missed collection, ordering a new container or paying for a subscription to a green waste collection. Through integration, the portal can provide real-time updates about collections to residents to help Brent close the feedback loop, manage expectations and avoid unnecessary contact.

The portal was designed in collaboration with Bromley Council, and was shortlisted for the Public/Private Partnership award at the LGC Awards 2022. For Brent, we hope to replicate the success Bromley has seen with WasteWorks, with a 40% drop in unnecessary contact within the first few months of launching and a continual rise in subscriptions to waste services.

Meanwhile, through FixMyStreet Pro, residents can report local problems such as potholes, blocked drains and fly-tipping. The solution is designed as a progressive web app, giving residents the option to use it as an app or a website, with no obligation either way. It also has the unique ability to automatically triage reports on a nationwide scale, including to Transport for London, which reduces avoidable contact and eliminates manual intervention.

Angela Dixon, Managing Director at SocietyWorks said: “Consistency is key when it comes to improving the digital experience for residents, and with both WasteWorks and FixMyStreet Pro working in tandem for Brent, residents will benefit from using an efficient and intuitive interface across two different but equally in-demand service areas. It is a pleasure to collaborate with a council that takes such a forward-thinking and thorough approach to digital transformation.”

–

If you would like to know more about FixMyStreet Pro or WasteWorks, request a free, informal demo here.