[CASE STUDY]

JJ's Waste & Recycling

The J-Weigh product measures the volume and type of waste from shopping centre tenants in order to increase awareness of general waste and lagging sustainability practices.


J-Weigh controls access to a compactor via RFID cards, weighs the waste on a scale, tipping the waste into the compactor once successful. The product works offline to support basement zones where wi-fi and network is patchy.


The solution was designed and built within 8 weeks, working alongside JJ's hardware vendor.

PRODUCT DESIGN, ARCHITECTURE, DEVELOPMENT

About JJ's Waste & Recycling

JJ's Waste & Recycling is a proudly Australian owned and operated family business that has been providing innovative waste management solutions throughout Australia since 1932.


The Company has grown through its philosophy of safety, reliability and excellence in customer service.


Their commitment to establish and maintain a close, productive working relationship with their customers ensures they provide the most efficient and cost effective service possible.

The Challenge

Decreasing general waste, by increasing waste diversion


Sustainability and the impacts on the environment are important topics in society today. In response to the increasing awareness in these areas, organisations are focusing more on how they can improve their environmental footprint.


Increasing waste diversion is increasingly a priority for shopping centre managers. Organisations are partnering with JJ's Waste & Recycling who offer waste solutions that allow them to track more effectively the amount and type of waste, alongside who is contributing towards this. 

"From the first day, the Patient Zero team sought to fully understand our needs, and to help us deliver this solution. We had the challenge of collaborating across multiple internal business units, our end customers and a hardware vendor. This engagement was a great example of collaboration between Patient Zero, JJ's Waste & Recycling and other parties.


We also wanted a solution that fit our existing architecture, something that we could support internally. This solution is a perfect example of partnership with a software vendor, where we got a great solution, and our customers will reap the benefits.


That we have a solution built in a matter of weeks, which can scale to hundreds of centres and their tenants is really exceptional. "


Stuart Popplewell
Deputy Chief Information Officer

The Solution

J-Weigh Customer and Administration Portal


JJ's Waste & Recycling identified a need to enhance their existing service offering of commercial products. In order to meet this need, JJ's Waste & Recycling partnered with Patient Zero to deliver the software capability.


The solution provides each tenant with security card access to waste compactors, along with transactional reporting on the types and quantities of waste disposed and recycled. It has been intentionally designed to allow for mandatory induction of tenants into the safe operation of waste compactors, as well as to improve recycling rates by making it transparent to the end user the costs of disposal.


This allows the Centre to identify which Tenants are contributing to their waste expenses, allowing introspection of the waste costs that were not previously possible. Supporting the centre in optimising their waste management disposal costs.


It is envisioned that a fleet of these waste compactors will be deployed around the country, utilised by JJ's Waste & Recycling to support the shopping centre managers and end customers in managing the waste volumes. The solution is designed to scale out to as many centres who take up the offer, who will access this data within a single instance of their cloud-based solution. This could see multiple centres, tenants and waste compactors reporting back to the same scalable cloud application.

The Process

The Patient Zero team worked in close partnership with JJ's Waste & Recycling IT, Engineering, Sales, their hardware vendor, alongside other business stakeholders to understand the overall goal of what we were trying to achieve, the logistical process in order to setup these machines, deploy and run them live, and ultimately an understanding of the why. With a deeper understanding we were able to ensure that the solution that was delivered provided the utmost value to all customers.


The solution was designed and developed over 4 sprints (8 weeks), with frequent releases to production. PZ worked closely with all parties and helped to co-ordinate integration testing with the hardware vendors to ensure the solution was ultimately ready for use. The project was delivered on time and on budget.

The Technology


The solution required integration of the physical waste compactor to a swipe card enabled hardware device, to a cloud-based API before presentation through a Web Portal. Patient Zero delivered the cloud-based API and Web Portal components. Working in conjunction with JJ's Waste & Recycling IT and their hardware vendor, Patient Zero designed and developed a suitable API, allowing for data capture, fault tracking and supportability for geo-distributed hardware with intermittent internet access.