Clean Cameras
Recycling surveillance
In early October a small Seattle based waste management company called CleanScapes pulled an amazing coup: It defeated two huge national companies for $25 million in Seattle-area service contracts. One of CleanScapes' ideas: photograph clients with tiny cameras to find out whether they're following the city's compulsory recycling law. Cameras on CleanScapes trucks (not installed in front of the houses, according to company CEO Chris Martin) would snap the photos, which the firm could either use to recommend that customers change their ways or simply send to the city authorities.
Billion-dollar sanitation giants usually dominate such contracts, and the possibility that $6 million CleanScapes might take over some municipal services surprised even CEO Martin, who calls the cameras "my best idea, my get-people-riled-up thing." Martin insists he doesn't want to become some kind of trash-compacting Big Brother. "It would be a little over the top to bust on someone because their kid put his beer bottles in the trash," he says. "The idea was to monitor commercial accounts where compliance with laws is not so good."
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
bsrt