IEEE International Conference on Communication System, Computing and IT Applications (CSCITA 2023)

Design and Development of

Smart Waste Management System
2023 International Conference on Communication System, Computing and IT Applications (CSCITA) | 978-1-6654-5987-7/23/$31.00 ©2023 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/CSCITA55725.2023.10104960

Palak Jain1, Taneesha Chaudhary2, Sachin Gajjar3

Dept of Electronics and Communication Engg.
Nirma University, Ahmedabad, India
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

waste in the bin because the traditional waste collection

Abstract— Waste management has now become a
necessary practice in all countries around the world. India vehicle has a fixed route to be followed. This leads to
generates approximately 65 million tons of garbage every wastage of time and other resources like petrol. This issue
year. The main challenge is to manage this waste. makes the
Conventional systems are not efficient to manage this much
amount of waste. IoT can play a dominant role in handling present system inefficient in terms of economic
waste and making any country greener and more efficient. facets. The Internet of Things (IoT) is an innovative
Time to Time disposal of waste is important and if ignored technology used to develop a network of physical objects
can be a health hazard. The current system for waste disposal with the help of sensors, actuators, and programs that are
in local areas for small and densely populated cities is inactive
which causes garbage to spread all over the area. The rate of embedded within the objects. The purpose of this network
garbage generation is higher than garbage disposal. It is is to connect and exchange data with other devices and
required to manage and dispose of the waste for a sustainable systems over the internet. The sensors, actuators,
and clean country. This paper presents an IoT-enabled Waste controllers, and communication systems are the three
management system for the collection of garbage. The system essential entities of the IoT responsible for the entire
consists of smart garbage bins made using Ultrasonic sensors,
NodeMCU, and a Global Positioning System (GPS) module. communication. Data from the environment is sensed and
The ultrasonic sensor detects the level of garbage in the collected by sensors. Data processing is the responsibility of
dustbin and notifies the garbage collection authorities when the controller. The microcontroller receives the data
the dustbin is full. The SMS and email notification are sent collected by the sensors, processes it, and then sends the
using If This Then That (IFTTT) and ThingSpeak the online results to the Cloud platform via internet access. The cloud
digital automation platforms. A mobile application is created
using the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) app offers services like sending email alerts under special
inventor where the authorities can see the status of the dustbin conditions. The major domains in which IoT finds its
and an optimized shortest route to be followed by the garbage applications include the field of healthcare, smart city, civil
collector truck for garbage collection and disposal. The infrastructure, environment monitoring, home automation,
proposed system is economical, practical, easy to use, and smart transportation, security, agriculture, smart metering,
requires minimal human interaction.
supply chain management, smart grid, industry, etc.
[2]. The benefits of IoT based smart waste management are
Keywords— Smart waste management, Internet of things, numerous, ranging from greater operational efficiency and
Cloud, IFTTT, ThingSpeak, MIT app inventor, GPS
cheaper operating costs to cleaner cities and reduced carbon
I. INTRODUCTION footprints. Smart waste management systems are designed
to deal with garbage overflow and its collection in smart
The current waste management systems in India are not
cities. In the proposed work, smart bins are designed with
efficiently managed due to the country’s growing
ultrasonic sensors to detect the level of waste in the dustbin.
population and the amount of waste they produce. Improper
Once the dustbin is full it notifies the authorities via email
waste management has a severe impact on the environment
so they to do the waste disposal on time. Additionally, a
and general health. In today’s environment, careful planning
mobile application is developed for waste-collecting truck
and technological application are essential to improve the
drivers to get to the location of the bin and the shortest route
waste management system. The amount of garbage in
to it. The system is economical, easy to use, and requires
India has also increased exponentially as a result of the
minimal human interaction. The rest of the paper is
country’s growing population [1]. Conventional waste-
organized as follows. Section II discusses previous
collecting techniques have grown expensive and
initiatives. Section III presents the hardware and software
ineffective. The most effective way to deal with this
design of the system. System implementation
tremendous volume of garbage is through smart waste
methodology is discussed in Section IV. Testing results are
management using antiquated waste collection techniques.
presented in Section V. Finally, the paper is concluded in
The existing waste management system in India has certain
Section VI.
loopholes, the first one being the overflowing bins.
Considering the present waste management system in India, II. LITERATURE REVIEW
at times when the bin is full, even then the authorities fail to Work in [3] proposes a waste management system using
collect the waste at the right time leading to the overflowing an ultrasonic sensor and a GPS module to automatically
of the bins. Moreover, with the present system, the vehicle check the status of the garbage bins. Another work in [4]
which is deployed to collect the waste from each bin moves measures the amount of garbage in the trash cans and sends
around and collects the waste irrespective of the amount of the information to a server for storage and processing for

978-1-6654-5987-7/23/$31.00 ©2023 IEEE

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 analysis of the garbage produced across different locations.
This analysis will help in planning the resources viz. the
number of trucks, bins, manpower, etc. required for
garbage management. Intel under its DevMesh Project has
proposed a smart waste management system in West
Bengal [5]. The system proposes the use of Intel Opt
ML/DL Framework, Intel Python, Movidius NCS, and
OpenVINO technologies to sort wastes as the ones that can
be recycled and ones that cannot be. Libelium has
developed a waste management solution with ultrasound
technology-based smart sensors that are used to measure Fig. 1. Pin diagram of NodeMCU ESP8266 [9]
the garbage fill levels in dustbins [6]. The data is sent to a
cloud-based platform using the LoRaWAN 2. HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Sensor
communication protocol. Kellow et. al. proposes a dustbin The Ultrasonic sensor HC - SR04 provides the non-contact
with a load cell to measure the weight of the garbage in the
measurement of the distance to the objects that are 2 cm to
dustbin. A temperature and humidity sensor (DHT11) is
also placed on the bin to measure environmental conditions 400 cm far [10]. Its accuracy is up to 3mm. It consists of an
in the vicinity of the dustbin. The aim is to help citizens to ultrasonic transmitter, a receiver, and a control unit. The
check the availability of nearby dust bins and their ultrasonic transmitter triggers a 40 kHz signal for a duration
locations using their mobile application [7]. of 10 µs. The receiver detects the signal reflected from the
nearby object. The time required for the signal to reflect and
All of the above-mentioned approaches either indicate
the velocity of the sound signal is used to calculate the
the amount of garbage in the bin or help the citizens find
the nearby garbage bin. This work aims to unify all the distance to the object. As shown in Fig. 2 there are four pins
proposed approaches and try to present a complete waste in VCC, Trigger, Echo, and Ground. VCC is used to supply 5 V
management system. For this, a smart dustbin that can to the sensor. The trigger pin is set HIGH for 10µs used to
monitor the level of waste in real-time is designed. The trigger ultrasonic sound pulses. The echo pin goes high when
dustbin further transmits details of the level of the waste to the ultrasonic signal is transmitted and remains high until the
a cloud service. The cloud service in turn sends email alerts receiver receives an echo signal from a nearby object. It then
if the waste crosses some predefined threshold level. goes low. Distance to the object is calculated by measuring
Further, a mobile application is developed that helps the time duration for which the Echo pin stays high.
garbage collecting trucks identify the nearby located Ultrasonic sensor HC - SR04 is used to sense the level of
garbage bins and the shortest path to reach them. This in garbage inside the bin and send the collected data to
turn reduces the cost of transportation and fuel
NodeMCU.
consumption.
III. HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE DESIGN
A. Hardware for Smart Dustbin
1. NodeMCU ESP8266
NodeMCU is a development board and open-source Lua-
based firmware that is specifically designed for Internet of
Things (IoT) applications [8]. It has hardware based on the
ESP-12 module and firmware that runs on Espressif Systems’
ESP8266 Wi-Fi System on Chip (SoC). The ESP8266 is Fig. 2. Pin diagram of Ultrasonic Sensor HC-SR04[11]
capable of offloading all Wi-Fi networking tasks from
3. NEO-6M GPS Module
another application processor or hostingan application. Each
NEO-6M GPS module can be used to determine the
ESP8266 Wi-Fi module is already pre-programmed with an
position of an object to which it is attached [12]. It consists
AT command set firmware. It can be programmed using
Arduino IDE to get Wi-Fi functionality. It has Tensilica 32- of NEO-6M a Global Positioning System (GPS) chip from
bit RISC CPU Xtensa LX106, an operating voltage is 3.3V, U-blox. It can track up to 22 satellites over 50 channels. It
and has 16 General Purpose Input Output (GPIO) pins, consumes only 45 mA current and gives a tracking
Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter(UART), sensitivity of -161 dB. It requires a 3.3V - 5 V range and has
Serial Peripheral Interface(SPI), an Inter-Integrated a Power Save Mode (PSM). With PSM power consumption
Controller (I2C) support. The cost of the board is around 250 can be reduced by selectively switching on and off certain
INR. Fig. 1 shows the pin diagram of ESP8266. The number parts of the receiver. As shown in Fig. 3 the module has
of GPIO pins is enough for the design of the smart dustbin transmit and receive pins for interfacing with the
and the WiFi support helps it to connect to the Internet. Hence microcontroller using UART. Baud rates from 4800 bps to
ESP8266 is used as the microcontroller to integrate the 230400 bps are supported by the module. Since ESP8266
ultrasonic sensor and GPS module. Additionally, inbuilt Wi- supports UART interfacing and 3.3 supply, NEO-6M GPS
Fi in the NodeMCU is used to connect to the ThingSpeak module is attached to the dustbin and is used to find the
cloud platform in the proposed model. location of the smart dustbin.

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200
 namely Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. MIT App inventor is used
to develop a mobile application that has a dashboard of smart
waste management. The dashboard displays the amount of
garbage in the bin, the location of the bin, and the shortest path
to the dustbin.
IV. METHODOLOGY
The block diagram of the entire smart waste management
is shown in Fig. 4 and its operation is shown in Fig. 5. The
embedded systems of the waste management consist of
ultrasonic sensor HC-SR04 and NEO 6M GPS interfaced with
ESP8266 NodeMCU. The embedded system is mounted on
Fig. 3. NEO-6M GPS MODULE [13]
the lid of the dust bin. It connects to the Internet with the WiFi
B. Software for Smart Dustbin transceiver available within the NodeMCU. It then transmits
1. ThingSpeak the ultrasonic sensor and the GPS data to the ThingSpeak
server. The sensor data is displayed in numerical and graphical
ThingSpeak is an IoT analytics platform that can be used
form on the dashboard designed on the ThingSpeak server.
to aggregate, visualize, and analyze live data streams in the The IFTTT website has an Applet service where a trigger
cloud [14]. Sensor data from an IoT device can be sent to event was created. The event would send an email alert to the
ThingSpeak. ThingSpeak does the following: (i) gathers authorities when the garbage in the bin reaches a maximum
sensor data (ii) creates live visualization of sensor data with specified level. The operation of the Mobile application is
MATLAB (iii) analysis data with MATLAB (iv) triggers shown in the Flow Chart in Fig 6. The MIT App inventor is
actuators to take at the IoT device. The sensor data that is used to develop a mobile application that can display data
sent to ThingSpeak can be stored in a private or public from ThingSpeak. It can also get the current location of the
channel. Once data is available in the ThingSpeak channel, dustbin. The mobile application also integrates the google
it can be analyzed, visualized, used to generate new data, map service where the address of all the dustbins placed is
and used to connect with other devices, web services, and stored in a database. When the email alert is received, the truck
social media. The amount of garbage in the smart dustbin is driver can find the location of the dustbin that is full. The
calculated by the ultrasonic sensor and the location of the application can also navigate him to the location of the bin via
dustbin is identified by the GPS module. The ultrasonic the shortest path.
sensor data and the GPS data are transmitted to ThingSpeak
and are visualized and analyzed on it.

2. If This Then That

If This Then That (IFTTT) is an online digital automation
platform that provides a visual interface to integrate popular
mobile applications, free web services, devices, and services
[15]. It is a platform through which IoT devices, services, and
mobile applications work together to run an IoT-based
application. It has partnerships with service providers across
the globe. These services are can be integrated through IFTTT
using their APIs. Any IoT application can be automated with
a service that has a combination of triggers and a set of actions
associated with it. Users can specify task automation using Fig. 4. Block Diagram of Smart Waste Management
formulas referred to as “recipes,” so that when something
occurs in one app, the event initiates an action in another
app. For the smart dustbin, ThingSpeak is integrated with
IFTTT with the help of Webhook service. With this, the
Ultrasonic sensor data from ThingSpeak is sent to IFTTT. As
soon as the Ultrasonic sensor data reaches a value beyond a
threshold level indicating the dustbin is full, an email alert is
sent to a designated email address.
3. MIT App Inventor
MIT App Inventor is a visual programming environment
that can be used to build mobile and tablet applications for
Android and iOS platforms [16]. It was originally developed
by Google and is now maintained by the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT). It provides an Integrated
Development Environment (IDE) that supports blocks-based
programming language for mobile applications
programming. It is a cloud-based tool, with which applications Fig. 5. Operation of Smart Waste Management
for phones or tablets can be developed using web browsers

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 Fig. 6. Operation of the Mobile Application
Fig. 10. Mobile Application Screen displaying the details of the dustbin

V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Fig 7. shows the smart dustbin with its embedded
systems. The dashboard of ThingSpeak is shown in Fig. 8
and the email alert about the dustbin being full is in Fig. 9.
The screen of the mobile application from where the
locations of the bin can be added to the database is shown in
Fig. 10. It also shows the detail to select the location from
where the garbage is to be collected. Further, it displays the
navigation panel with the help of google maps. Fig.11 shows
the mobile screen that displays the garbage level and the
dustbin location. Fig. 12 displays the shortest path to the
dustbin from the current location of the mobile.

Fig. 11. Mobile Application Screen displaying

garbage level and location of dustbin

Fig. 7 Experiment setup of NodeMCU and GPS module

Fig. 8. Garbage level in the dustbin on the ThingSpeak

dashboard

Fig. 12. Mobile Application Screen displaying

Fig. 9. Email alert about the dustbin being full the shortest path to the dustbin

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