Questions answered.

POUBELLE.AI is currently in development. Our official launch is expected in August 2026.

Yes & yes! A working prototype is available. Contact hello@poubelle.ai if you are interested in trying it!

The short answer is: any types of items! POUBELLE.AI is designed to identify a vast range of household and industrial waste. Our AI can recognize everything from standard recyclables to complex "hard-to-recycle" items, including:

Daily Packaging: Milk and juice cartons, takeout containers, cups, chip bags, granola bar wrappers, and bubble wrap.
Household Items: Furniture, old clothing, bedsheets, beauty products, and plastic items.
Electronics & Hazardous Waste: Electronic and electrical devices, lithium-ion batteries, vapes, light bulbs, and old X-rays.
Tangled & Specialty Items: Garden hoses, holiday lights, air pillows, and expired medication blister packs.
Home & Construction: Construction materials, mirrors, cracked ceramics, and styrofoam.
Organic & Medical: Food scraps and medical waste.

Our database is constantly syncing to ensure that no matter how "weird" the item is, you receive accurate, hyper-local sorting instructions.

No. POUBELLE.AI is an educational tool. Each sorting instruction is accompanied by a brief explanation of the why (e.g., "This is #5 plastic and is accepted here because..."). Over time, users learn the rules and no longer need the app for common items. They only use it when they have a doubt on an item or visit a new area with different rules.

Our success is measured by behavioral changes, contaminations decrease and diversion increase.

No. POUBELLE.AI follows the hierarchy of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. We guide users toward reuse and donation options whenever possible before suggesting a disposal option.

For MRFs, cleaner incoming streams increase the value of the final baled commodities, making the entire facility more profitable. It also lowers equipment maintenance costs (e.g., no plastic bags tangling in sorting gears).

For haulers, reduced contamination means fewer rejected loads. Also, by linking their hopper-mounted camera to POUBELLE.AI, haulers transform standard collection trucks into intelligent auditing hubs for automated enforcement and revenue recovery from repeat offenders.

Audit from the Cab: Stops the manual lid-flip audits. Triggered either by a driver request or on a scheduled interval, the AI scans the bin's contents, identifies contaminants, and generates a report with the bin contamination rate.
Geospatial Event Logging: Every audit is instantly tagged with GPS coordinates, a timestamp, and the specific residential or commercial address.
Digital Collection Summaries: The system generates a contamination report, including high-resolution image captures and a list of detected contaminants for proof of offense.

Cities hit their Zero Waste goals faster. Additionally, our tool provides an equitable way to deliver standardized education in English and Spanish across diverse neighborhoods. It also provides intelligent auditing hubs for automated enforcement and revenue recovery from repeat offenders when haulers use the POUBELLE.AI in-truck solution.

Institutional partners (including airports, universities, multi-family buildings, and businesses) reduce their landfill tipping fees and hit their Zero Waste goals faster. Additionally, POUBELLE.AI provides an equitable way to deliver standardized education in multiple languages. The solution also provides annual reports on education and outreach results required to get program's costs reimbursement in the states where Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is implemented.

POUBELLE.AI is a low-carbon tool that uses Response Caching to reuse stored sorting answers instead of running new AI computations, minimizing energy use so that the environmental savings from correct recycling far outweigh the app's power consumption. Learn more about Response Caching.

Recycling guide websites are the essential source of truth that experts in resource management have created and maintained. Our technology is the high-speed delivery system to make the information from those guides instantly accessible to people at the bin. It does this by providing a frictionless solution, ensuring consumers stay current without the need for reprinting signage or catalogs. We also make it easy for consumers to sort complex and multi-material items, which is often difficult to represent on a static sign. Our AWS-powered engine enables dynamic interactions, allowing consumers to ask questions and receive precise answers in under 2 seconds. By removing the need for interpretation, we eliminate sorting anxiety at the bin. POUBELLE.AI also moves beyond the confusing Mobius Loop (recycling symbol), which often misleads consumers.

Yes. We are built on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world's leading cloud platform. This allows us to offer bank-level security for your data, 99.9% uptime for our sorting services, and the ability to handle millions of scans across the country without ever slowing down. By choosing AWS, we ensure that POUBELLE.AI is a future-proof tool for a cleaner planet.

We are proud to be developed & maintained by Zeb, AWS Partner. Click here to learn more about Zeb.

Yes. We designed POUBELLE.AI as an open interface, not a closed island. POUBELLE.AI uses a serverless, Application Programming Interface (API)-driven architecture that allows for rapid integration with external platforms. Our system is built to collaborate with the tools your team already uses (including waste management software, hauler systems, third-party sustainability apps, and smart-city platforms) ensuring data flows smoothly between our AI and your current systems.

Our instructions come directly from local waste management authorities and the specific Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) that process your materials. POUBELLE.AI doesn't guess or search the open web for generic rules. We partner with official institutions to provide hyper-local, verified guidance. By bridging the gap between a physical object and local policy, we ensure you always have the most accurate information for your specific location.

We keep the instructions accurate through two primary methods:

1 - Automated Weekly Syncs: For cities with official websites, POUBELLE.AI performs a weekly automated check. If the city updates its rules, like adding a new recyclable material, our app identifies the change and updates its instructions automatically to stay aligned.

2 - Direct Partner Access: For institutions without a digital rulebook, we provide direct access to the POUBELLE.AI Registry. This allows local officials to log in and update their sorting policies manually, ensuring their specific community needs are always met in real-time.

When a sorting rule changes, such as a hauler adding or removing a recyclable item, we do more than just updating our database. We immediately push a notification to residents in that specific area who have opted-in, ensuring they stay informed about the latest local policies.

POUBELLE.AI is built on a Human-in-the-Loop feedback system. If the AI's confidence score for an item falls below a certain threshold, it prompts the user to categorize it manually and flags it for our team to review. This edge case data allows us to continuously retrain the model on new packaging designs, ensuring the system gets smarter.

Yes, through assisted classification. The app uses a multi-layered approach to distinguish between materials that look identical to the naked eye:

Visual & Text Recognition: The AI first identifies the object, scans for specific markings, such as resin codes (1–7), compostable labels, or certification marks like Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI) Certified and Polylactic Acid (PLA, bioplastics), and looks for subtle clues.
Interactive Verification: If a code is blurry, dirty, or hidden, the app won't guess. Instead, it will ask the user a quick follow-up question, such as: "Is there a number inside the triangle?" or "Is the inside of the bag or the cup shiny or matte?"
Existing product packaging material database: The app identifies materials by cross-referencing scans with a consistently enriched database of product compositions.
Conservative Safety: If a material cannot be identified with high confidence even after user input, the app provides a conservative instruction based on local rules to prevent contamination.

Not necessarily. Many packages have marketing labels that don't match local reality. POUBELLE.AI ignores the marketing and follows the official rules for your specific location.

Poubelle means "trash can" in French. It is a unique eponym (a word named after a person). In 1884, Eugène Poubelle, the Prefect of the Seine in Paris, revolutionized urban living by making waste containers compulsory and introducing the first systematic sorting process. After Eugène Poubelle revolutionized waste management, his name became so synonymous with the bins he mandated that it officially entered the French dictionary as a common noun.

Our brand name is a tribute to Eugène Poubelle and a 140-year legacy of innovation. The founder and CEO of POUBELLE.AI, Guillaume Poubelle, is one of the direct descendants of Eugène Poubelle. Today, we are evolving that legacy for the modern world, adding the digital eyes and AI-driven intelligence the system has always needed to reach its full potential.

No. We do not sell any user data. All personal data is kept strictly confidential and is never shared for commercial purposes.

Through the web app, which does not require user signup, we collect anonymous geo-located data on products or packaging scanned. This allows us to map contamination hotspots and help our customers identify which specific products confuse consumers. Through the mobile app, we collect email addresses and cities in addition to geo-located data on product scanned. With user authorization, this information allows us to send push notifications when local sorting rules change.

Our institutional partners (municipalities, airports, universities, multi-family buildings, waste haulers, businesses) gain access to real-time professional dashboards through the Poubelle Pro subscription. These dashboards provide anonymous, geo-located data on scanned products and packaging, categorized and mapped specifically to the partner's perimeter. By offering critical, data-driven insights into local waste habits, we empower partners with comprehensive annual reports. These reports document education and outreach results, which are vital in states with Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws, allowing institutions to claim reimbursements for their environmental efforts.

No. POUBELLE.AI is free from third-party banner ads and unrelated commercial interruptions. We only display diversion partners, vetted services that provide a legitimate reuse, donate, recycling or composting pathway.

We don't just tell you where it goes; we tell you why. After a scan, users can access deep-dive content, including videos on the impact of contamination, the dangers of methane from organics in landfills, the fire risks of batteries in trash, and how correct sorting directly mitigates climate change.

"Yes. Beyond simply identifying the bin, the app provides specific behavioral instructions, such as: "Empty the can," "Rinse this container," "Remove the plastic film," "Keep the cap on," "Remove the battery"..."

Yes. The app acts as a sustainability coach. It will recommend packaging options that are more recyclable or orient users toward less-packaging alternatives to reduce waste at the source.

POUBELLE.AI bridges the gap between state mandates and real-world diversion. We help both institutions and producers meet legal requirements through:

For Institutions (Cities, Airports, & Campuses)
Cost Reimbursement: We provide the annual reports on education and outreach results required to get their program costs reimbursed.
Compliance Audits: We identify if non-compliant packaging is still entering the waste streams.
MRL Integration: We automatically update the Minimum Recyclable List (MRL) for users as soon as local facilities are compliant.

For Producers & Brands
Fee Savings: We provide producers with reports on their items being scanned by users and the instructions given (recyclable, compostable or landfill). They can prove that their packaging efforts lead to increased diversion. This helps them justify lower fee tiers by proving their packaging is compatible with local infrastructure.
Verified Diversion Data: Our Poubelle Pro dashboard tracks "Scan-to-Sort" events. We can provide producers with reports showing: "10,000 users scanned your yogurt container this month, and 92% received 'Recycle' instructions based on their GPS location." This data serves as a proxy for successful diversion, which is vital for EPR annual reporting.

We work with institutions, businesses, universities, airports, and haulers to place POUBELLE.AI QR codes directly on their bins. When a consumer scans the code, it launches the POUBELLE.AI web app, instantly ready with no download or sign-in required. Users simply take a photo of the item in their hand and receive accurate sorting guidance in under 2 seconds.

Yes. Once you discover the web app through a QR code, you can easily save it to your phone's home screen for daily access. Additionally, once the full mobile app is launched, it will be available for download through the App Store and Google Play.

The technology is built to be rolled out wherever sorting rules exist and where decreasing contamination and increasing diversion are priorities. We can map the specific rules for any city, airport, or campus across the country.

If the solution is used in an area where it has not been deployed yet, the consumer will be informed and invited to find the sorting instructions in a different manner. If the area is covered but no clear rules are available for a specific item, the solution will warn the consumer to double-check on the local sorting authority's website (provided by the app).

Yes. Inclusion is a core pillar of our mission. The interface is designed to be multilingual, allowing users to receive sorting instructions in their preferred language. The first two languages available will be English and Spanish.

No. Poubelle Go ($0) is our standard version for everyone. Our core sorting guidance is, and will always be, free to the public and includes 30 scans per week to get instant, hyper-local sorting instructions. The goal is to ensure that every person, regardless of budget, can sort correctly every single time and can have a positive impact on our planet.

Poubelle Go is our standard version for everyone. Our core sorting guidance is, and will always be, free to the public and includes 30 scans per week to get instant, hyper-local sorting instructions. The goal is to ensure that every person, regardless of budget, can sort correctly every single time and can have a positive impact on our planet.

Poubelle Plus ($10 — one-time pack)
Special occasions often require sorting a high volume of items in a short window. Whether it's a garage cleanout, seasonal decluttering, or a major life event (a home renovation, residential relocation, university move-out, or estate clearing), residents need more than the standard weekly allowance of scans. Poubelle Plus is a one-time $10 pack of extended scans for exactly those busy periods. No subscription, no long-term commitment.

Poubelle Premium (Annual Subscription — you choose the price)
For eco-enthusiasts and power users who want to take their impact to the next level. Choose to contribute between $15 and $50 per year, whatever feels right to you. It includes extended daily scans and advanced features: a personal sustainability dashboard to track your diversion history, recycling games and quizzes.

Poubelle Pro (Professional Subscription)
Designed for our institutional partners (counties, cities, airports, universities, waste haulers, multi-family buildings, businesses, and producers), this version offers enterprise-grade features and professional dashboards. It provides critical data-driven insights into local waste habits and calculates bin contamination rates. Our Business Analytics tools help organizations reach their ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) goals through real-time data and comprehensive annual reports.

Poubelle Go is free. Poubelle Plus is a one-time $10 pack of extended scans. Poubelle Premium is an annual subscription where you choose your contribution level, between $15 and $50 per year. Poubelle Pro pricing is custom and tailored to your organization's needs; contact us at hello@poubelle.ai for a quote. Plus and Premium pricing is subject to modification.