Super Bowl Waste Management Victory Goes to Geospatial Technology

Levi's Stadium

by | Feb 8, 2016

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Levi's StadiumSuper Bowl 50 victory went to the Denver Broncos last night but the waste management winner was Trimble Geospatial Solutions, which provided the geospatial technology used to clean up illegal dumping sites across San Jose, California.

As Waste360 reports, the city has seen a 75 percent increase in illegal dumping over the past several years. This waste — which includes everything from large appliances and furniture to old tires, household trash, computers and TVs — poses a major environment, health and safety problem.

It’s also an economic problem: the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) says California local governments spend tens of millions of dollars every year to remove illegally dumped waste, and private property owners have to pay out of pocket clean up dump sites.

With the Super Bowl and related festivities representing an $800 million opportunity to the Bay Area, the city of San Jose, working with San Jose State University and CommUniverCity, chose Trimble’s geospatial technology to clean up the community. The technology, which can be accessed from mobile devices and computers, tracks the type of waste being dumped, such as e-waste or hazardous waste, and where the dumpsites are located. This data helps contractors who pick up the waste dispose of it properly.

Rick Gosalvez, local government market manager for Trimble Geospatial Solutions, told Waste360 the cleanup covered six areas broken into 3 days of work and consisted of 1,061 points of collection made up of about 60 percent trash, 30 percent shopping carts and 10 percent hazardous materials.

The cleanup is ongoing; later this month another assessment will be conducted to see if illegal dumping has slowed.

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