Case Study: Renfrewshire Council achieves higher recycling rates, lower costs and reduced carbon footprint with RouteSmart Technologies

Renfrewshire Council - Customer Case Study

Renfrewshire Council needed to increase recycling rates and meet SOA, Scottish and EU targets while introducing co‑mingled recycling and fortnightly residual collections for over 80,000 households. The council sought a technology solution to streamline collection routes, reduce mileage, fuel use and carbon emissions, and minimise disruption to residents — procuring the RouteSmart routing software from RouteSmart Technologies to support this change.

Using RouteSmart Technologies’ RouteSmart software integrated with the council GIS, GPS route surveys and local property data, Renfrewshire redesigned and tested dynamic collection routes, trained staff and implemented a north/south partitioning model. The RouteSmart Technologies solution reduced frontline routes, removed three refuse vehicles, achieved a net staff reduction of 14, cut around 147 tonnes CO2 per year, delivered targeted annual savings of £355k and helped lift recycling from 30.5% (2008/09) to 37.43% (2009/10) and 48.5% in Q1 2010/11, with the system now being expanded to other services.

Renfrewshire Council