Dear Rick:

Hope you're fine and watching the game from home. Remember, tomorrow is recycling and trash pick-up day. You've really been piling on the empties lately – is there a problem you want to talk about?

Sincerely,

Your Municipal Trash Collector.

Notes like that (minus that last sentence) could become more commonplace in America if City Bin International is right. The company, the U.S. subsidiary of Ireland's City Bin, specializes in back-end computer systems for garbage haulers and recyclers with a particular emphasis on customer service.

"People think what they are getting is a good as what you can get," said City Bin CEO Gene Browne, adding that residents served by City Bin report a 99 percent satisfaction rate.

The customer satisfaction directly turns into higher recycling rates, which in turn cuts down the need for landfill. The software also trims the number of employees trash companies have to employ. A typical trash outfit has one customer service representative per household. City Bin customers have one for every 9,000 households.

How does it work? City Bin puts sensors on the garbage truck that weigh the trash 30 times on the upswing and 30 times coming down. It then sends a message to consumers "in five seconds," detailing how much of their trash is recycling, how much is compost, and how much is raw trash. It then gives you data on how you compare to your neighbors and your own past. Peer pressure and a little encouragement then increase recycling.

It also sends you a message to remind you about trash pickup with contemporary hooks. "If there is a game on, we might mention that," he said. City Bin also engineers refunds for dissatisfied customers. It's their equivalent of a money back guarantee. "You don't want your waste back," he said.

City Bin also takes over the back-end administration for trash collectors. The suite of systems adds anywhere from $1.50 to $3 per month per household.

In some ways the company is a hybrid of Positive Energy (which sends peer pressure notes in utility bills telling consumers if they are good or profligate consumers), Recycle Bank (which gives people reward points for recycling) and SAP (which takes over customer service center operations for corporations most of us don't think about that much).

In Europe, trash companies compete for customers like cell phone companies here. In the U.S., trash mostly gets hauled away by municipal monopolies. But U.S. cities can benefit from increased recycling. Houston has a 4 percent recycling rate. Let me repeat that – a 4 percent recycling rate. The national average is close to 30 percent and San Francisco clocks in at more than 70 percent. 

Browne is in the states to get City Bin International off the ground and is part of a delegation to promote Ireland in Silicon Valley. For years, Ireland's tech industry largely consisted of serving as a European outpost for multinationals like Google and Intel. But steadily it has become a font for startups. Most are in software but a growing number specialize in greentech, particularly biomass and wave power companies. Various universities have also set up incubation centers. With VCs looking more internationally, we could start to see more deals emerge from the country.