With the continuous increase in those wanting to dispose of their refuse material, the City of Chattanooga Waste Department wanted to ensure that they could aptly handle this influx. 

The goal was to  decrease the tonnage and disposal costs at the city’s  three refuse collection centers by enforcing our new policy to allow up to 12 disposables per rolling 12 month period, as well as enforcement of existing procedures limiting disposal to city residents.

As a result, the department began exploring automated data capture that would instantly record how many trips a resident visited the site and whether they were in the city limits.

Increasing efficiency

It has always been customary to have refuse center participants fill out their information on a paper form and for the Public Works Department to manually determine whether the address is within City limits. However, this process was extremely tedious and time consuming. Chattanooga wanted to implement a business model that expedites the process to maximize their time as well as the customers.

Average Transaction time for gathering customer data and determining whether they are within recycling limit.

Since the implementation of its automated data capture program, the City of Chattanooga has experienced a tremendous increase in accurate information as the process was cut down from 1 minute to 3 seconds, and that their accuracy in data collection is now at 100%.

Software solution

An automated data capture strategy featuring VeriScan Online application with an address exclusion validation component. If the visitor is not a city resident, they are turned away. 

The City of Chattanooga sought IDScan.net, the leader in ID scanning solutions to execute this project.

“The VeriScan Online automated data capture application is an enormous added value. Our goal is to continue to streamline our refuse center participation processes. The address exclusion validation component allows us to determine whether the people coming through are City residents and whether they have reached their maximum of twelve visits per year. The instant notification allows us to operate much more efficiency.”

Debie Mikel, Technical Information Manager

System Benefits

• Collect resident information from ANY government issued ID.
• Positive experience. Customers and employees appreciate processes that are considerate of their time and allow them to operate with ease.
• Ensure accurate data. Eliminate wasted time locating people whose information was not entered properly.
• Save time. Eliminate tedious labor as well as manual data entry errors.
• Customizable. Create multiple questionnaires.

Outcome

100% accuracy in data capture, faster processing times, reduced disposal and transfer costs. The average time to process each customer at the city’s recycling sites has been reduced from 1 minute to less than 3 seconds.