Solid Waste Collection as a Service using IoT-

Solution for Smart Cities

Sangita S. Chaudhari Varsha Y. Bhole

Department of Information Technology Department of Information Technology
A. C. Patil College of Engineering A. C. Patil College of Engineering
Navi Mumbai, India Navi Mumbai, India
[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract— There has been tremendous increase in solid waste and activities of self-decisive, independent and aware
generation in last few years. Solid waste management is a key and citizens”[1]. In a Smart City collection of solid waste is a
challenging issue of environment in the whole world. Hence, critical chore for environment and its impact on society must
there is a need to develop an efficient system which can eliminate be considered seriously.
this problem or at least reduce it to the minimum level. In today's
era, every government across the globe is planning to build smart IoT technologies play an important role in smart cities for
cities or try to transform existing cities into smart cities. implementation of new services and redesigning of the
Collection of solid waste is a crucial point for environment and its existing services [2]. For smart cities, solid waste collection is
impact on society should be considered seriously in smart cities reformed as Waste Collection as a Service. This service can
infrastructure. Internet of Things (IoT) technologies can include online dynamic scheduling and routing of the garbage
efficiently handle such services in smart cities. In this paper, we collector trucks [3]. Solid waste collection should consider
are proposing an IoT based solid waste management system two main problems: (i) when to collect waste from garbage
which enables garbage bin monitoring, dynamic scheduling and bins (i.e., scheduling), and (ii) route selection by the garbage
routing of garbage collector trucks in a smart city. In the collector trucks (i.e., routing). IOT enabled solid waste
proposed system, garbage bins equipped with low cost embedded management system indicates the level of garbage bins at any
device are located at various places in entire city. Real time status time. It optimizes waste collection route and ultimately reduce
of garbage level along with garbage bin location is sent to cloud. fuel consumption. It allows waste collectors to plan their
We have designed a cloud based system for organizing solid
daily/weekly pick up schedule. We are proposing an IoT based
waste management process and mobile application for waste
collection drivers and Municipal Corporation to monitor and
solid waste management system, which enables garbage bin
control solid waste collection as a service. Mobile application monitoring, dynamic scheduling, and routing of garbage
facilitates the waste collection drivers to go to the garbage bins collector trucks in a Smart City. We also implement cloud
using dynamic and shortest route. system for organization of solid waste management process
and mobile application for waste collection truck drivers and
Keywords—Solid waste management, Internet of Things (IoT), Municipal Corporation. Hence the present study.
Cloud, dynamic scheduling, routing In many cities, we find garbage bins overflown at various
public places in cities due to increase in waste. It creates
I. INTRODUCTION unhygienic surroundings and bad odor which leads to spread
of deadly diseases and human illness. In today’s era, most of
Due to large increase in population growth and economic the metro cities are in transformation phase and likely to
development in the country, there is tremendous growth in reformed as smart cities. To evade an unhygienic situation
solid waste generation in our country. Solid waste caused because of poor garbage collection methods, we
management is a major issue of environment in the whole propose to design IoT based Waste Management System for
world. Solid waste management is a big issue not only in the Smart Cities. In this proposed system, there will be multiple
urban cities of India but most of the countries in the world. garbage bins positioned throughout the city or campus, these
Hence, there is need to develop an efficient system which will garbage bins will be set up with low cost embedded device
solve this problem or reduce it to certain level. It will help us which helps in tracking the level of garbage in particular bin
to keep our environment clean and green in an efficient way. along with location tracking module to get real time location
In today’s era, every government across the globe is of bin. All the real time information including garbage level as
planning to build smart cities or try to transform existing cities well as location of that bin will be send frequently to concern
into smart cities. “A Smart City is a city well performing in a authority and garbage collector truck driver as well. The truck
forward-looking way in the following fundamental driver will have android application which will show real time
components (i.e. Smart Economy, Smart Mobility, Smart information about all bins to driver that which bin is how
Environment, Smart People, Smart Living, and Smart much full and which location in need to graphical form. So he
Governance), built on the ‘smart’ combination of endowments can go directly to place where actually empty the garbage bin
to achieve Resource optimization, cost reduction, time 2. To serve dynamic service, this shows status of each
management and active participation of truck driver. garbage bin in that region and an optimized route to reach
fully filled garbage bins.
The present study is essential as in day to day life; we see
the depictions of overflown garbage bins which spill out III. PROPOSED SYSTEM
causing pollution. The overflown garbage in public areas
creates unhygienic surroundings. In urban areas of most of the Proposed system involves monitoring and collection of
countries Solid waste management is a big challenge solid waste from wet and dry garbage bins placed at different
throughout the world. An efficient and smart solid waste places in a particular geographical area. Figure 1 shows the
management plays an important role in maintaining and architecture of the proposed system. Proposed system is
safeguarding clean and green environment opportunities. implemented by considering following phases:
1. Design of hardware prototype to indicate level of
garbage in the garbage bins.
II. RELATED WORK At each location, two garbage bins (for wet and dry
garbage) are placed which contain ultrasonic sensors to
Lots of research has been done on waste management indicate level of garbage in the bin. Microcontroller and
throughout the world. Most of them were focusing on manual RFID based circuitry is used to send the garbage bin status
collection of waste, its dissemination, and its recycling. to central cloud server.
Recently, people start using technology for monitoring and
2. Development of software and hardware module at
collecting the waste in an efficient way. Mahajan and Chitode
central Cloud server.
[4] have proposed Zig-Bee based waste bins monitoring This module will receive real time status updates from all
system. The sensors placed in the garbage bins sense the level the garbage bins and continuously display it on web
of garbage in the garbage bin and status of garbage bin is application and also push the notifications on client side’s
communicated to garbage collection truck driver using short
(Municipal Corporation, Garbage collector truck drivers
messaging service. Similar approach is proposed by Gupta and etc.) mobile application.
Kumar [5]. They have utilized RFID and GSM technology for
3. Development of Mobile application to show current
communicating status of garbage bins. In the proposed system
location and status of garbage bins on regional area
proposed by Bhor [6], the extent of garbage in the bins is
map.
spotted with the help of Sensor systems, and communicated to Mobile application will show the real time status of
the authorized control room through GSM system. To monitor garbage bins which will be used by garbage collection
the required information related to garbage bins at different truck drivers to indicate that garbage bins are full or likely
selected locations a GUI is also developed. This will increase to be full.
the efficiency of garbage collection management. Smart bins
4. Generation and display of dynamic shortest path from
concept for waste collection management for entire city is
garbage collector truck to fully filled garbage bins.
proposed in [7]. Smart bins level indicator data is collected This module is also responsible to calculate shortest path
using sensor network connected to bins and further analyzed
from garbage collector truck to garbage bins. Route
and visualized to illustrate the real status of waste in city.
Existing systems are not able to transmit status of garbage bins optimization is handled by central cloud server.
and calculation of optimized route simultaneously. So there is
a need to develop a system which will show real time status of
garbage bins and at the same time show and show optimized
route to garbage collection truck driver to reach the garbage
bins.
Against this background regarding the untidy or
mismanagement of garbage collection system, IoT enabled
solid waste management system is studied with the following
objectives.
The collective aim of this project is to assist Municipal
Corporation and garbage collector contactors to efficiently
monitor and collect solid waste from garbage bins in their
region using IoT enabled solid waste management system. It
will serve as a dynamic service, which shows status of each
garbage bin in that region and an optimized route to reach
fully filled garbage bins.
1. To assist Municipal Corporation and garbage collector Figure 1: Proposed System
contactors to efficiently monitor and collect solid waste
from garbage bins in their region using IoT enabled solid
waste management system.
 IV. IMPLEMENTATION We have used EM-506 GPS receiver from USGlobalSat which
We have developed an IoT enabled Waste Management is based on the spectacular SiRF StarIII chipset. It includes on-
system for smart cities in which garbage bin will be provided board voltage regulation, LED status indicator, battery backed
with ultrasonic sensor to sense the level of garbage along with RAM, and a built-in patch antenna 6-pin interface cable. With
GPS module to get real time location of bin, together will sent SiRF CGEE (Client Generated Extended Ephemeris)
to cloud through internet and will be analyzed to give utility technology, it predicts satellite positions for up to 3 days and
based android application for truck driver. delivers CGEE-start time of less than 15 seconds under most
conditions, without any network assistance [10].
Ultrasonic sensors measure the sound waves with higher
frequencies which human being normally does not sense. The open-source Arduino Software (IDE) is used for
These sensors typically do not require physical contact with writing a code and upload it to the board. The environment is
their target [9]. Ultrasonic sensor plays an important role in written in Java. This software is used with Arduino UNO R3
the proposed system. HC-SR04 Ultrasonic sensor is used to board [11]. The data which is sensed by HC-SR04 along with
sense the depth of the bin to get the garbage level. Figure 2 location information will be sent over the internet through Wi-
shows the HC-SR04 Ultrasonic sensor. Fi Module ESP8266. Transmitted data will be collected at
cloud so we will be able to access data from anywhere using
internet as shown in figure 4. The continuously sensed data
from garbage bins are stored in cloud server and can be further
used by both Waste management authority and as well
garbage collection truck drivers. We have utilized ThingSpeak
open IoT Platform which used as a cloud to store sensor data
in xml format, csv format or JSON format. ThingSpeak
provide two API keys, one to write data to ThingSpeak and
another to read real-time data from ThingSpeak.
Centralized information system will be setup at Waste
management Authority or municipal authority site to monitor
the overall system which will provide real-time status of
Figure 2: HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Sensor
garbage bin located in particular region and also location of
truck driver so they can measure the performance of system
Figure 3 shows embedded system of Sensor, Wi-Fi Module and as well they will do data analysis to take particular
ESP8266 and GPS Module with Arduino board. Arduino Uno relation. We have used the shortest path algorithm to find
is a microcontroller board based on the ATmega328P. It has distance between garbage bins which are need to get empty by
14 digital input/output pins (of which 6 can be used as PWM truck driver. So truck driver will work more efficiently and
outputs), 6 analog inputs, a 16 MHz quartz crystal, a USB will have well resource optimization. We have used Google
connection, a power jack, an ICSP header and a reset button map package for dynamic routing.
[8].

Figure 3: Circuit diagram of embedded system

The ESP8266 Wi-Fi Module is a self-contained SOC with Figure 4: Transmission Pattern
integrated TCP/IP protocol stack which gives access of Wi-Fi
network to any microcontroller. The ESP8266 is capable of V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
either hosting an application or offloading all Wi-Fi IoT Based Waste management system was implemented
networking functions from another application processor [10]. and tested at indoor location. Figure 5 shows the final
In the proposed system, GPS module is used to collect prototype built for the proposed system.
location of bin in terms of longitude and latitude.
 Figure 7: Garbage Bin Status

Figure 5: Garbage Bin Prototype

ThingSpeak platform is used for visualization of the

sensed data from garbage bins. Figure 6 shows the statistics of
waste in garbage bins using ThingSpeak. The data collected at
ThingSpeak is automatically stored in csv file and then further
it is processed using python or R for analysis purpose. Result
of such analysis is shown in figure 7. It shows the status of
garbage bins indicating how much waste is collected in bin
and gives indication when bin is full. Location of Garbage
bins are shown in Map as shown in figure 8. The status of
Garbage bin(Full/Empty/likely to be filled) is shown on map.
The Red color garbage bin in the map shown in Figure 9
Figure 8: Garbage Bin Location on Map
indicated that the bin is full.

Figure 9: Status of Garbage Bin

The proposed system also provides the facility for the

garbage truck driver to see the route from his current location
to the completely filled garbage bin location. Figure 10 shows
the route to be followed by garbage truck driver to reach to the
bin. Figure 11 shows the current status of the garbage truck on
the followed route to reach the completely filled garbage bin.
Figure 6: ThingSpeak IoT Platform statistics
 We have developed an application based on android platform,
in which real time information about garbage bin is shown in
graphical form on map so garbage collector truck driver can
go directly to the place where there is need to empty the bin.
Also, driver can have active participation in whole system
which isn’t seen in current waste management system. We
have used Google Map API for finding efficient path to reach
the desired bin in quick time.
To make our system more eco-friendly and make use of
natural resources, we are further incorporating solar panel
which is renewable and clean source of energy with our
proposed system and also system can be equipped with smell
sensor(MQ-2 ) to sense the intensity of false odor coming out
Figure 10: Route Tracing Functionality from garbage bin.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work is supported by Mumbai University Minor
Research Grant, 2016-17(No.558).
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Garbage collection in recent years was treated in a rather
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