Insightz

Are electric and self-driving trucks the future of waste disposal?

The future of waste disposal is green…and possibly driverless? In recent years, Seattle announced their shift to eco-friendly garbage trucks, making them the first city in the nation to adopt waste management electric trucks. 

More cities are likely to follow suit yet the potential innovations don’t end there. A few years from now, you may see driverless trucks in your neighborhood on trash pickup day! Self-driving, or autonomous, vehicles might not be mainstream today, but the technology is being developed. 

Some cities like San Francisco are already experimenting with self-driving ride-sharing cars. In Sweden, Volvo and the Swedish waste company Renova partnered to test autonomous garbage trucks. With advances in electric vehicles (EVs) and self-driving technology, autonomous EV garbage trucks may be coming to our neighborhoods in the future.

How do autonomous, self-driving vehicles work?

Car and truck manufacturers have been testing automated vehicles on highways for several years, with mixed results. A person sitting in the driver’s seat can monitor the road and take control if needed, and for the most part, self-driving technology performs well on highways and in rural areas. 

Sensors tell a vehicle when to slow down or stop, and routes can be pre-programmed to match GPS directions. Even in urban areas, self-driving cars seem to be able to follow pre-programmed routes.

Can self-driving garbage trucks be effective?

Garbage collection routes are pre-planned, and trucks follow the same routes week after week. This makes them easy to program and easy to monitor when testing self-driving technology. 

In the Volvo tests, a person would sit inside the truck while driving to and from a collection area, but the truck would drive itself through the neighborhood while the person collected garbage cans and emptied them in the back.

There were two major developments in the self-driving truck world in 2022. A specialty truck manufacturer was awarded several contracts to start producing autonomous postal and garbage trucks, which would bring them to U.S. roads within a decade. And a driverless electric freight truck manufacturer was granted permission to operate a pilot on public roads in the U.S.

What about electric trucks for waste management?

Even before self-driving becomes mainstream, garbage trucks are starting to become electrified. New EV battery advances have made it easier to produce larger electric trucks with better towing capacity, including waste management electric trucks. 

The next time you see a garbage truck in your neighborhood, there’s a good chance it’ll run on an alternative fuel source – and be sure to check for a driver!