City of Houston partners with digital waste, recycling solutions company

smart city tech

Mayor Sylvester Turner says this new smart city technology partner will help digitize and optimize waste operations. Photo via rubicon.com

The City of Houston announced that it has entered into a three-year partnership with Kentucky-based Rubicon with the goal of improving its waste, recycling, and heavy-duty municipal fleet operations.

According to a statement, the city has installed the company's RUBICONSmartCity platform on the Solid Waste Management Department’s 391 vehicles, and has trained the workforce on using the SaaS software.

“Partnering with Rubicon will help our great city optimize its solid waste operations and make it possible for us to digitize our entire waste and recycling management system,” Mayor Sylvester Turner said in a statement. “The City of Houston is committed to providing the highest level of service to its residents and this partnership will allow us to provide better services, save taxpayer dollars, and deliver a better quality of life for Houstonians.”

RUBICONSmartCity is a cloud-based suite that will allow the department's workforce to track key metrics about pickup, including issues at the curb and recycling contamination, as well as information about its fleet of vehicles. The platform includes a mobile app, an onboard data collection device, and a web-based portal.

The city envisions that information collected by RUBICONSmartCity will enhance reporting tools used by 311 and give the department a better understanding of what's happening in the field.

“The City’s Department of Solid Waste can use this information to advise and educate residents around service scheduling, best practices for waste and recycling management, and reduce costly return trips,” Solid Waste Management Department Director Mark Wilfalk said in a statement. “These insights, alongside route optimization and digitization efforts, are set to deliver an optimal operation to the City of Houston.”

RUBICONSmartCity is used in more than 70 cities across the U.S., including San Antonio. The product was the focus of a 2021 Amazon documentary entitled "The Road to Zero Waste," which focused on Rubicon's work in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

“Our partnership with the City of Houston is off to a fantastic start, as we were able to install our products and train the entire Solid Waste Department’s workforce in only 73 days, an incredibly fast turn for such an undertaking,” Michael Allegretti, Chief Strategy Officer at Rubicon, said in a statement. "This partnership comes at a critically important time, as Houston and other cities across the nation look to maintain, and ultimately expand, service levels.”

In August 2021, the City of Houston also launched HTX Collects, a mobile app aimed at helping residents keep track of weekly services, updates, and waste collection days. At that time, the city estimated that it collected curbside service for over 395,000 residential homes within the city limits.

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Houston space company lands latest NASA deal to advance lunar logistics

To The Moon

Houston-based space exploration, infrastructure, and services company Intuitive Machines has secured about $2.5 million from NASA to study challenges related to carrying cargo on the company’s lunar lander and hauling cargo on the moon. The lander will be used for NASA’s Artemis missions to the moon and eventually to Mars.

“Intuitive Machines has been methodically working on executing lunar delivery, data transmission, and infrastructure service missions, making us uniquely positioned to provide strategies and concepts that may shape lunar logistics and mobility solutions for the Artemis generation,” Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus says in a news release.

“We look forward to bringing our proven expertise together to deliver innovative solutions that establish capabilities on the [moon] and place deeper exploration within reach.”

Intuitive Machines will soon launch its lunar lander on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to deliver NASA technology and science projects, along with commercial payloads, to the moon’s Mons Mouton plateau. Lift-off will happen at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida within a launch window that starts in late February. It’ll be the lander’s second trip to the moon.

In September, Intuitive Machines landed a deal with NASA that could be worth more than $4.8 billion.

Under the contract, Intuitive Machines will supply communication and navigation services for missions in the “near space” region, which extends from the earth’s surface to beyond the moon.

The five-year deal includes an option to add five years to the contract. The initial round of NASA funding runs through September 2029.

Play it back: Houston home tech startup begins 2025 with fresh funding

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 272

One of the dozen or so Houston startups kicking of the new year with fresh funding is SmartAC.com, a company that's designed a platform that enables contractors in the HVAC and plumbing industries to monitor, manage, and optimize their maintenance memberships through advanced sensors, AI-driven diagnostics, and proactive alerts.

Last month, the SmartAC.com raised a follow-on round with support from local investor Mercury to continue growth and expansion of the product, which has evolved on many ways since the company launched in 2020, emerging from stealth with $10 million raised in a series A. In a May 2023 interview for the Houston Innovators Podcast, Founder and CEO Josh Teekell explained how he embraced the power of a pivot.

The company's sensors can monitor all aspects of air conditioning units and report back any issues, meaning homeowners have quicker and less costly repairs. While SmartAC.com started with providing the service and tech to homeowners directly, Teekell says he's had a greater interest in working with plumbers and HVAC companies who then deploy the technology to their customers.

"It became quite evident that homeowners don't care about air conditioning really at all until their system breaks," Teekell says on the show. "The technology is really built around giving those contractors as another way to gain a customer relationship and keep it."

Revisit the podcast episode below where Teekell talks about SmartAC.com's last raise.

SmartAC.com's previous round in 2023 — a $22 million series B — was used grow its team that goes out to deploy the technology and train the contractors on the platform.

"We've been very fortunate to get some of the biggest names in Houston on our cap table," Teekell says in the May 2023 conversation. "Since we're raising a bunch of money locally, everyone understands what a pain air conditioning can be."

Houston biotech company tests hard-to-fight cancer therapeutics

fighting cancer

A Houston-based, female-founded biotech company has developed a treatment that could prove to be an effective therapy for a rare blood cancer.

Cellenkos Therapeutics has completed promising Phase 1b testing of its Treg cell therapy, CK0804, in the fight against myelofibrosis. According to a news release from the Cellenkos team, the use of its cord-blood-derived therapeutics could signal a paradigm shift for the treatment of this hard-to-fight cancer.

Cellenkos was founded by MD Anderson Cancer Center physician and professor Simrit Parmar. Her research at the hospital displayed the ability of a unique subset of T cells’ capability to home in on a patient’s bone marrow, restoring immune balance, and potentially halting disease progression.

Myelofibrosis has long been treated primarily with JAK (Janus Kinase) inhibitors, medications that help to block inflammatory enzymes. They work by suppressing the immune response to the blood cancer, but don’t slow the progression of the malady. And they’re not effective for every patient.

“There is a significant need for new therapeutic options for patients living with myelofibrosis who have suboptimal responses to approved JAK inhibitors,” Parmar says. “We are greatly encouraged by the safety profile and early signs of efficacy observed in this patient cohort and look forward to continuing our evaluation of the clinical potential of CK0804 in our planned expansion cohort.”

The expansion cohort is currently enrolling patients with myelofibrosis. What exactly are sufferers dealing with? Myelofibrosis is a chronic disease that causes bone marrow to form scar tissue. This makes it difficult for the body to produce normal blood cells, leaving patients with fatigue, spleen enlargement and night sweats.

Myelofibrosis is rare, with just 16,000 to 18,500 people affected in the United States. But for patients who don’t respond well to JAKs, the prognosis could mean a shorter span than the six-year median survival rate outlined for the disease by Cleveland Clinic.

Helping myelofibrosis patients to thrive isn’t the only goal for Cellenkos right now.

The company seeks to aid people with rare conditions, particularly inflammatory and autoimmune disorders, with the use of CK0804, but also other candidates including one known as CK0801. The latter drug has shown promising efficacy in aplastic anemia, including transfusion independence in treated patients.

The company closed its $15 million series A round led by BVCF Management, based in Shanghai, in 2021. Read more here.

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