BidòFor councils and waste collection operators
Residents search on their phones for ‘when is the plastic collected?’. Bidò answers with your council’s (Comune) calendar, in the app and by voice with Alexa.
What makes Bidò different
Many recycling apps only work in the councils that switch them on or in the area of a single operator. Bidò starts from the official documents and is already available for over 5,400 councils (Comuni).
- No work and no cost for the council: no contract, no fee, no tendering. The calendar is already there and cites the official document.
- The council decides when to get involved: the reserved area is free and lets you publish notices, recycling centres and calendars that carry the ‘✓ Ufficiale’ (Official) tick.
- By voice too: the Alexa skill ‘raccolta rifiuti’ (waste collection), handy for people who prefer not to use a screen, and a widget on the phone.
- Recycling centres with opening hours and ‘open now’, and doorstep collection of bulky waste shown first where it exists.
- Reports of neglect: residents use the app to report fly-tipped waste, full or broken bins and illegal dumps, with a photo and location. They reach your council privately, and you reply and update the status.
- In four languages: Italian, English, German and Romanian, useful for tourists and foreign residents. The language is chosen once and stays on the phone.
- No account and no tracking for residents, and no advertising.
The council’s reserved area
The council can manage what residents see on Bidò by itself, without going through us and at no cost. Whatever you enter carries the ‘✓ Ufficiale’ (Official) tick and is shown first, in the app, on the website and with Alexa.
- Service notices: collection rescheduled, strike, centre closed. They are published immediately and can have an attachment (image or PDF).
- Recycling centres and help desks with address, opening hours (including summer and winter hours) and contacts.
- Office contacts: ecology, environment, public relations office (URP).
- Reports from residents: fly-tipped waste, full or broken bins, illegal dumps, with a photo and location. Only your council sees them, without the name or contact details of the sender: you take them on, close them and write a short reply that the resident reads in the app.
- Calendars: review them before declaring them official, copy them, create new ones, extend them or redo them for the new year (with last year’s public holidays suggested).
- Anonymous statistics on how your council’s pages are used.
How to get in
- Registration: choose the council, enter your institutional email (on the council’s domain, for example nome@comune.nomecomune.bg.it) and a password of at least 10 characters with upper-case and lower-case letters and a number.
- Confirmation: you will receive an email with a link, valid for 24 hours, to confirm that the address is yours. Check your junk folder too.
- Access: if the address is on the council’s official domain (we take it from IndicePA) you can log in straight away. For unions of councils or unusual domains, we check the request before it is activated.
If you forget your password, choose ‘Forgotten password’ on the login page: you will receive a link to set a new one. There can be more than one person per council (for example the environment office and the URP).
Log in to the reserved area Register your council
We store only your email, council and a hash of your password (never the password in plain text). Inside the area you will find a guide that explains each feature and takes you to the right page with one click. See the privacy notice.
What we can do for you
- A verified official calendar for all zones and days, with public holidays, make-up collections and changes.
- Service notices to residents: collection suspended, new calendar, make-up days.
- App and Alexa skill with your branding and customisations, on request and by agreement.
- Yearly updates from your calendar, with no work for your offices.
- Aggregated, anonymous usage data: which councils and zones are searched for.
How it works today
The service is already live: it has the calendars of thousands of councils in every region (see the coverage map). Calendars imported from operators are checked day by day before publication and realigned every month. Bidò does not replace the official calendar: it makes it easy to consult.
What residents find on your council’s page
- the next collection, with today’s and tomorrow’s waste and the time by which to put it out;
- the monthly table, to print or save as a PDF, and the file to add to Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook;
- the recycling centre and eco help desks, with opening hours and ‘open now’ when the data is available;
- the official PDF of the calendar or the link to your website, with the source and update date clearly visible;
- answers to the most frequent questions (‘when is the plastic collected?’), built from the council’s calendar.
How to update the calendar
The quickest way is the reserved area: in the ‘Calendari’ (Calendars) tab you see your council’s calendars, declare one official or create a new one. Alternatively, you can send us the official document:
- Send us the official calendar for the new year (PDF or web address) with zones, collection days, public holidays and make-up collections, by writing to bido.app.rifiuti@gmail.com with the name of the council and of the operator.
- The calendar is transcribed and checked day by day against the official document, then published: it appears straight away on the website, in the app and with Alexa.
- If anything changes during the year (suspensions, make-up collections, new zones), write to the same address: the council’s page always shows the date of the last update.
Alternatively, anyone can publish the calendar from the app, and other users can confirm it or report errors: calendars with many reports are hidden automatically. If your official calendar is already online, the council’s page cites it as the source.
Link to Bidò from your website
If the council’s or operator’s website has a recycling collection page, you can add the link ‘Calendar also available on Bidò’. It is an ordinary link: no script, no tracking, no cost. Search for the council and copy the HTML snippet to paste into the page.
2. Copy the code (for now the link goes to the list of councils)
Preview: Calendar also available on Bidò
Reporting an error
If a day, zone or type of waste does not match the official calendar, every council page has a link at the bottom, ‘If you notice an error, write to…’: it opens a ready-made message with the page address. Give the zone, date, type of waste and where you checked; for an error in an official PDF, attach the document.
Let’s talk. Write to bido.app.rifiuti@gmail.com, stating the council or operator.
Bidò is not an official website of any council or operator: calendars are transcribed from public documents or published by users, and in case of doubt the council’s calendar prevails. For data protection, see the privacy notice.