Rubicon Global announced that the city of Fort Smith, Ark., has selected Rubicon to formally implement a smart city solution to help improve residential and commercial waste and recycling services across the city.

The city of Fort Smith’s goal is to enhance its municipal solid waste, recycling and yard waste offerings, both in terms of sustainability and customer service, through the integration of Rubicon’s technology. The city of Fort Smith will pilot the RUBICONSmartCity platform for six months. The second-largest city in Arkansas, Fort Smith boasts nearly 90,000 residents and a landfill that serves up to 300,000 residents of the surrounding multicounty region. The city has more than 40 sanitation vehicles providing residential, commercial and roll-off collection services for roughly 32,000 locations, all of which will be part of the RUBICONSmartCity launch. 

The RUBICONSmartCity platform includes a smartphone-based mobile app, a plug-in device and a web-based portal. The technology will allow the city of Fort Smith’s Department of Sanitation to collect real-time service confirmations, provide GPS vehicle tracking and enable the documentation of driver issues, including the inability to successfully complete a pickup. The RUBICONSmartCity manager portal will collect data and analytics, providing the city with real-time route updates, daily reporting and operational insights, leading to more efficient operations and ultimately improved service for its customers and citizens. Rubicon’s technology will be installed across the city’s entire waste and recycling fleet.

“Rubicon Global is remaking the entire landscape of waste and recycling through innovative technology and data analysis that helps cities of all sizes make smarter decisions about their waste, recycling and overall city operations,” said Michael Allegretti, chief strategy officer at Rubicon Global, in a statement. “Using RUBICONSmartCity, the city of Fort Smith will be able to leverage data collected from its fleet using a phone and pod-device in real time to plan optimized routes, track vehicle locations and confirm service at every location, ensuring that Fort Smith continues to realize measurable gains in terms of quality of life, customer service and taxpayer savings.”  

The city of Fort Smith, Ark., has been outspoken in pushing sustainable solutions for its businesses and residents. In the past few years, the city has formed a Recycling Advisory Committee made up of both city members and citizens, and its Keep Fort Smith Beautiful campaign has been supported by the Sebastian County Regional Solid Waste Management District.

“This literally takes us from managing with paper and pencil into the 21st century, smartly managing our resources and operations across our city,” said Kyle Foreman, director of sanitation for the city of Fort Smith, in a statement. “Implementing Rubicon’s smart city solution across our fleet means we’re connecting every vehicle and driver with operations management at all times. Operations will be able to redirect our resources where they’re needed when they’re needed, and we expect that to result in significant operational savings.” 

“These savings—the stretching of our precious budget dollars—will help us do more with less," added Carl E. Geffken, city administrator. “We believe we’ll serve our customers better, that our sanitation vehicles will last longer, we’ll save on fuel … There are a number of benefits. Bottom line is we expect this smart city solution will help us effectively do more with less. That saves our residents money in the long run.” 

Rubicon Global is a technology company that powers a digital marketplace, provides a suite of software as a service products for waste, recycling and smart city solutions and collects and analyzes data for businesses and governments worldwide.

RUBICONSmartCity has been rolled out in more than 35 cities across the U.S., including Atlanta; Columbus, Ga.; Fort Collins, Colo.; Irving, Texas; Montgomery, Ala.; Norfolk, Va.; Philadelphia; Santa Fe, N.M.; Spokane, Wash.; Tyler, Texas; and West Memphis, Ark.