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Smarter Waste Management For Municipal Wastes

Managing waste has been a constant challenge for urban areas and metropolitan cities. The modern lifestyle of urban residents results in significant growth of waste volume. Moreover, The United Nations claims that over half of the world’s population was living in urban areas in 2018. The development of industrialization and manufacturing also increases the volume of harmful toxic wastes. Therefore, it is one of the critical items which needs proper addressing for environmental health. Smarter waste management solutions can be helpful to address growing urban waste effectively. Making waste management convenient, effective, and rewarding is the only way for smart cities to manage waste.

What Smarter Waste Management Looks Like?

Smarter waste management aims to be more efficient and smarter with the ways of waste collection and tracing. Empowering end-users with a more competent tool in the form of smarter dust bins is the first step towards better waste management. Combinations of sensors, internet connectivity, and user interface add up to novel dust bins. Moreover, the regular collection of full dustbins and availability of empty dustbins can improve waste disposal. Following the collection, smart cities can even track or suggest the best route for waste collection. As a result, a centralized management system can be the key control for waste management authorities.

Role Of Technologies For Smart Bin

Smart dustbins will be the key to next-generation waste management. Technologies will empower dustbins to communicate the level of their occupancy. Various sensors and combinations of those can act as a key to measure if the dustbins are full. For instance, the ultrasonic sensor is one of the popular choices to identify the presence of liquid or objects in any container. Placing an ultrasonic sensor on the dustbin’s topside can help predict the presence of waste in the dustbin. Otherwise, different approaches would include the use of load cells to verify the bin occupancy with waste weight. Especially, load cells can be pretty effective in measuring liquid wastes in industries.

After measuring the dustbin occupancy, dustbins have to communicate this measurement to the cloud database. The collection of data from every area would allow authorities to manage the pickups effectively. Implementation of user interface and navigation systems can further create more value by suggesting the best possible route. These routes would be custom every time as per the occupancy of dustbins. Effective pickups and gathering of waste eventually play a vital role in creating a smarter waste management system.

Main Advantages Of Smarter Waste Management

Waste management systems are often overlooked. However, proper waste management is a reflection of a stable, growing, and disciplined community. Here are several ways through which smart cities benefit from clever waste management:

  1. Better hygiene and environment in the city for higher living standard
  2. Evaluate the source of toxic wastes in the cities
  3. Understanding waste production in the city for better management
  4. Insightful allocation of adequate waste collection infrastructure
  5. Optimization of given dustbins
  6. Monitoring any misplacement or harms to the dustbins
  7. Implementing ideal waste collection frequencies and routes
  8. Option for on-demand waste collection
  9. Notifying irregular waste on roads
  10. Allowing users to find nearby disposal infrastructure

Clever Waste Management To Avoid Waste Of Money

Waste management is a big chain of operations in metropolitan cities. As such, it demands a significant budget that otherwise would have been used for the growth of different areas. There are a few costs relating to waste administration, including workforce costs, vehicle costs, fuel costs, and costs pertaining to harms caused to disposals. Smart cities can significantly reduce these costs with the help of better waste management. Therefore, a small investment in terms of smart dustbins and a web dashboard can provide exceptional results. 

In Conclusion

Traditional waste management systems are inefficient in a way that they offer no insights. Identifying the type of waste and where it is generated can lead to important discoveries. Especially in current times, managing waste is a serious matter of human health. The Internet of things and low-cost electronics are empowering efforts towards wasteful procedures like waste management. To summarize, it is about time that smart cities start paying attention to growing waste and how it can be managed efficiently. One-time implementation of better waste management sounds like a perfect solution.

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