Zero Waste Circular Management Service -RIA (Recycling Information Assistant)
About this good practice
RIA is a chatbot service which was developed under the EMERGREEN Project funded by the Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme. EMERGREEN was led by ERNACT. and aimed to bring new innovative models for participative, user-centred, quality and sustainable public services to greener communities in remote areas. Under EMERGREEN, a number of green pilots for improved public services were developed and RIA was one of them.
RIA (Recycling Information Assistant) started as an EMERGREEN pilot for Derry City and Strabane District Council (DCSDC) and is an innovative chatbot based on AI technologies of Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP). The developer was Insight of University of Galway. RIA became operational on the DCSDC recycling website November 2022. Its purpose is to inform the public about recycling services on a 24-7 basis by answering citizens queries. RIA also gives recycling options, can inform when bins on a specific street will be emptied and answers queries about which items can be recycled and where is the nearest recycling centre. RIA also gives suggestions to nudge behaviour towards increasing recycling by providing advice and resource links.. Additionally, the system assists the public in reporting issues more easily. A key benefit is that RIA frees council staff from dealing with mundane waste/recycling enquiries and provides an improved 24-7 service to the public.
Resources needed
ERNACT, Derry City & Strabane District Council, an Irish university & 3 other EU regions collaborated in the Northern Periphery & Arctic Programme 2014-2020 funded EMERGREEN project. The budget was €1.6 million & 4 pilots were developed -one was RIA. New business models were also developed.
Evidence of success
- A 24-7 answering system for citizens on recycling
-70% decrease in calls to recycling department since launching online recycling systems and freeing council staff from dealing with mundane enquiries.
- Traffic to new website: 60,758 Pageviews of which 57,369 to recycling page (stats from 22/05/20 – 02/08/22)
- Working with NGOs and community groups through co-creation and testing has increased goodwill, improved access to sustainability information and empowered citizens.
Potential for learning or transfer
The service implemented by the Derry City and Strabane District Council could be replicated by another region by collaborating with local AI technology providers.The potential for learning is in several aspects:
-The process of developing the chatbot, capturing requirements in a user-centred and structured manner, the approach to testing in an inclusive way.-
-Another aspect of RIA is on the building of capacity in the Council to update the RIA knowledgebase (such as bin collection schedules) and monitor the conversations via a tracking platform.
-Other regions can learn from the functionality developed and how it supports increase of recycling.
-The technologies utilised can also be transferred (a back end of an SQL server, RASA an open source python based server and a frontend powered by REACT). However Large Language Model approaches may now be easier to implement.
