FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

City of Chicago to launch Yard Bot for streamlined yard waste pickup

In Fall 2018, a fleet of 50 Chicago citizens will be tasked with collecting bagged dry leaves from households around the city.

The Cost of Yard Waste

Improper disposal of yard waste, such as dry leaves and grass clippings, poses an environmental threat. These contents often end up in landfills, producing harmful methane gas as they decompose. According to a 2009 American Biogas Council report, 17.1% of methane emissions in the US come from landfills.

Since 2007, the City of Chicago has attempted a myriad of solutions to divert yard waste from landfills, to minimal success. Among the challenges, city officials cite low participation in collection programs. Citizens can call the 311 hotline to request pickups, but, at their peak, these calls represent just over 3% of the 600,000 households served by the Chicago Streets and Sanitation Department.

Families who do call in to 311 have complained that the collections are not efficient. In many cases, their yard waste ends up being taken on garbage pickup day, ultimately ending up in landfill. Streets and Sanitation cannot deploy collection trucks specifically for yard waste without significantly raising taxes.

Announcing Yard Bot

To solve this problem, the Mayor’s Office has partnered with the Roback Foundation, a Chicago-based non-profit promoting better city and citizen stewardship of the environment. Together, the two organizations have funded Yard Bot, a program that will recruit a team of Chicago citizens to collect yard waste.

Yard Bot will test the concept of a crowd-sourced collection fleet by recruiting 50 drivers in Fall 2018. Drivers will make a weekly salary for meeting their required quota of pickups, delivering the yard waste to specialized city composting facilities. To sign up for the program, drivers must own a qualified pickup truck and a smartphone. According to the Yard Bot website, drivers are assigned “efficient pickups routes through the Yard Bot Facebook messenger service.”

Few people view picking up dry leaves as a glamorous job, but one Chicago citizen who has already signed up for the program spoke highly of the opportunity. “I think it’s a solid gig. The job is easy enough and I’m gonna make as much money as I would working at McDonald’s,” said Bronzeville resident Alan Cramb.

“I think it’s a solid gig. The job is easy enough and I’m gonna make as much money as I would working at McDonald’s.”
– Alan Cramb, Resident, Bronzeville

Drivers on the Yard Bot team can also rent a wagon from the city to increase the number of pickups they can make, helping save on gas and hours.

Enviromental and Economic Development

Mahmoud Kahack, director of strategic partnerships for the Roback Foundation, billed Yard Bot as “an environmental and economic development program that will add new seasonal jobs to low-income areas of the city.”

“[Yard Bot] is an environmental and economic development program that will add new seasonal jobs to low-income areas of the city.”
– Mahmoud Kahack, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Yard Bot

In December 2017, the Roback Foundation funded Yard Bot up to $250,000 for the initial pilot. The pilot will only recruit 50 drivers, but the city expects it to grow. As part of Mayor Emanuel’s efforts towards part-time and seasonal job creation, the Mayor’s Office announced an additional $100,000 contribution to Yard Bot in April 2018.

Yard Bot has worked to make driver signup accessible to their target demographic. There are no complicated paper forms to file, interested citizens can simply visit yardbot.github.io or their local library to start the application process. Minhua Xu, director of outreach for Yard Bot says that their strong social media presence on Facebook has also helped bring in applications.

Messenger Bot

In tandem with the fleet of drivers, Yard Bot is also developing a public-facing Facebook messenger chat bot that allows citizens to “request a yard waste pickup in 20 seconds, rather than five minutes by phone or website,” according to the program’s technology director, Haosheng Li.

“Requests from both the Messenger bot and the city’s existing 311 infrastructure will go into the Yard Bot platform to generate efficient pickup routes, making it easier for the city to adopt and for drivers to meet their quotas,” explains Li.

The Messenger bot will launch publicly for all citizens to use in early August.

“[Citizens of Chicago] will be able to request a yard waste pickup in 20 seconds, rather than five minutes by phone or website.”
– Haosheng Li, Director of Technology, Yard Bot