Smart Waste Management via IoT

One of the most startling concerns in the world is waste management and with the population on a rise it is difficult to manage and keep the city intact. Hold on, you may wonder why it’s a concern with all those garbage disposal trucks on the road causing commotion?

Well, IoT reaches into nearly every aspect of life and IoT is the solution to this over lasting problem. Conventional waste collection is costly because a fleet of garbage trucks travel throughout the city to collect garbage and without the help of any data on litter, garbage trucks have to ensure following routes specified to them and along the way they find some bins that are overfilled and some just empty. Now, with the help of IoT solutions a sensor can be embedded into these garbage bins and these sensors to measure the amount of garbage present in the bin and dumpsters. Machine learning will once again play a vital part as it will monitor information gathered by the sensors and machine learning will be able to predict when the bin will be full. This method is very cost-friendly and impacts the environment on great levels including our thirst for a smart city. Bins and dumpsters that are overfilled are given a priority and garbage trucks will now choose specific routes and not pass by all the streets because the sensor embedded into these waste disposals will alert the system once it is full or even if its empty to save time; routes will also be updated on the drivers app for new data received by the sensors.

“With this technology we don’t just save manpower, we also impact the environment considerably and provide customer satisfaction”

So, pickup points will be minimized and few garbage trucks will be on the road which means less congestion and less CO2 emissions. One of the greatest risks we face is global warming and the key factors causing this is waste and CO2 emissions. The earth’s ozone layer is our only protection from the UV radiation emitted from the sun and due to our ozone layer being damaged we see a significant rise in health problems and warmer climates. It became so obvious how much pollution we create and during this pandemic (COVID-19) the air has become clear and healthier all over the world because of the reduction in CO2 emission, hence, this just shows how a simple IoT sensor embedded in bins and dumpsters can impact our lives substantially.

Smart waste management systems will reduce time and money spent on waste management. Waste collection is taken for granted and only when something goes wrong like waste bin spilling over from how full it is or in many places waiting for a whole week to recycle garbage because you forgot to take the trash out. This smart technology will change our lives by giving us ease, collecting waste more frequently from where needed and impact the environment positively due to fewer vehicles being on the road, collection of waste only from where it is needed and most importantly this smart technology will be the most important steps towards smart cities.