Victoria’s Brimbank City Council is using sensors to better manage its street litter bins and public toilets.

The bin monitoring project uses PiPIoT LevelSense sensors, the BigMate IoT platform and Sigfox connectivity, and council was supported by Thinxtra in the implementation.

Asset and property manager at the council, Dominic Di Martino, said smart bins was chosen as the first project because they are difficult to manage manually.

“There is a lot of variability in terms of usage of bins, highly dependent on time of the year, events, weather, etc,” he said.

“Having a standard service routine, will almost always mean servicing the bins either too early or too late, [which is] clearly less than optimal.”

Council is now expanding the smart bin project beyond its initial commitment due to the success it has seen to date.

It is also exploring new projects including connected public toilets - “using remote sensors to ensure council’s public toilets are well maintained and issues are identified and responded to as they arise”.