Auckland Council will begin trialling artificial intelligence (AI) in recycling trucks next month to identify the wrong kind of rubbish and help narrow down those who repeatedly use the wrong bins.
Refuse staff say the rate of contamination of bins has risen from 20 percent to 25 percent since stricter rules came in two months ago.
"The trial will have two cameras feeding into two trucks and that would then feed into software with object recognition," said Auckland Council's general manager of waste solutions, Parul Sood.
"The software will be able to recognise three of the biggest contaminants: plastic bags, rubbish bags and textiles," she said.
And AI could be adapted to recognise other contaminants.
"If anyone is stuffing their recycling bin with rubbish bags we need to know that so it's quite important that we catch those ones because they do create an issue at the processing facility," Sood told Newshub.
The data will narrow the GPS coordinates of the contamination to an approximate area of 10 houses.
After that, bin inspectors or members of the community engagement team will follow up.
Contamination costs Aucklanders around $3 million every year, money that will otherwise come from ratepayers.
This comes as Auckland Council also proposed to cut costs by changing its rubbish collection from weekly to fortnightly.
Watch the video above for more.
