TL;DR
- The cost consists of hardware on the truck, installation, the platform and support. The price depends on your fleet and your application, and is quoted on request.
- The return comes from four areas: less time for visual inspections, lower processing costs and levies, fewer rejected loads and less fire risk.
- With the calculation framework in this article, you can estimate with your own figures when the investment pays for itself.
What does AI waste recognition on a refuse truck cost? We cannot give a fixed price per vehicle here: that depends on the number of trucks, the waste streams and what you want to measure. What we can show is what the cost consists of and where the return lies. That way you can judge for yourself whether the investment pays off.
What the cost consists of
| Cost item | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Hardware | Industrial camera, lighting and a rugged AI computer per vehicle |
| Installation | Less than 4 hours per truck on average, so little downtime |
| Platform | Access to the Daisy Portal with dashboards, reports, maps and integrations |
| Support | Remote monitoring, software updates and help with problems |
According to Rematics, D4T's uptime is 99.7 per cent. A system that goes down delivers no data and so no return either. So include availability in your comparison.
Return 1: less time for visual inspection
Anyone collecting commercial residual waste must visually check the contents and report non-conformities. With D4T, that inspection happens automatically at every lift, with image evidence included.
Worked example: a vehicle with D4T empties around 25,000 containers per year on average. If we count 15 seconds of manual inspection and reporting per lift, that comes to around 104 hours per vehicle per year. Replace those figures with your own numbers and hourly cost.
Return 2: lower processing costs and levies
Since 1 January 2026, businesses in Flanders have paid for residual waste based on the weight actually presented. The environmental levy on incineration rose from 16.26 euros to around 32 euros per tonne. Every tonne that moves from residual waste to a recycling stream avoids that levy, on top of the difference in processing price.
In commercial waste, D4T measures on average 40 to 50 per cent recyclable material. With objective data per customer, a collector can give targeted advice and back up surcharges for non-conforming waste with images. In What contamination really costs you can read the five cost layers of one wrongly presented container.
Return 3: fewer rejected loads
A load that a processor rejects costs twice: the trip to the processor and the trip to an alternative. Anyone who spots non-conforming lifts early can adjust before the truck leaves. Rematics assumes 2 to 5 avoided trips per vehicle per month. That is an assumption, not a measurement. On the impact page you can see what that delivers across the whole fleet in kilometres and CO2.
Return 4: less fire risk
A battery or gas cylinder in the compactor can cause a fire in the truck or later in the sorting centre. D4T gives the driver an audio signal as soon as the system spots such an item. The value of this is hard to express in euros beforehand, but one avoided vehicle fire weighs heavily in any business case.
The calculation framework
Fill this in with your own figures:
- Hours of visual inspection and reporting per year × hourly cost = saving on inspection.
- Tonnes of recyclable material removed from residual waste × (levy + difference in processing price) = saving on processing.
- Avoided trips per year × cost per trip = saving on transport.
- Add the three together and set them against the annual cost of the system.
Best leave the fire risk and the stronger customer relationship out of the basic calculation. See them as extra margin.
Ask for a tailored calculation
The quickest way to get a concrete figure is a conversation about your own fleet. Request a demo or first read the frequently asked questions about installation and operation.