Towards the new intelligent garbage

Imagine that you are enjoying a few days of vacation in a tourist area. The weather is good and the city offers numerous opportunities to wander around and discover its main attractions.

Suddenly, on one of your walks, you come across dozens of garbage bags piled up on the sidewalk waiting to be picked up next to some containers that don't fit a pin. And the sad thing is that they are not the first ones you see like this. Your first reaction is to draw a disgusted grimace and mumble an expression of displeasure. You try to cross quickly, holding your breath and almost tiptoeing to avoid stepping on those suspicious trails that cross the sidewalk. Once the “obstacle” has been overcome, you take a quick look back and, just in case, you rub the soles of your sneakers against the sidewalk.

This scenario, although imaginary, is unfortunately quite common in some urban areas (it is easy to see the discomfort it causes on social networks). In fact, you might have even experienced it up close. What impression did it make on you? What did you tell your family or your circle of friends when you returned (yes, the city is very nice, but some streets are a bit disgusting...)?

These types of negative opinions that circulate by word of mouth can put an end to the efforts of a tourist area to become a destination of excellence. However, it is a problem that is not limited to tourist areas with poorly designed infrastructures, unable to serve a large number of tourists. Inhabitants of cities, non-tourist urban centers, rural areas or natural areas also suffer from this type of inconvenience, either because the waste removal service is not efficient, the collection routes are poorly planned or because the distribution of garbage containers is not adequate, to name a few recurring reasons.

Intelligent waste collection systems, also known as smart waste systems by their name in English, they try to provide a solution to this problem, with proposals such as the one presented below.

Pick up just when needed.

One of these new proposals for the management of garbage collection is the one that Hirisens has launched on the market under the trade name of Hiriwaste. The solution, which triumphs in the market, is based on the placement inside each container of a volumetric sensor that, with an operation similar to that of a sonar, detects how full the container is.

Information on the filling level is transmitted in real time to waste management personnel, who can view the status of each container through a web platform and automatically establish the best waste collection route, optimizing available resources and reducing polluting emissions.

In addition to the fill level, the sensors also send alerts related to other incidents such as rollovers or fires.

And although only the traditional garbage containers found on the street have been mentioned, this system can be implemented in all types of tanks (organic waste, waste oils, paper, plastics and containers, etc.), underground or on the surface, that require continuous measurement of the space still available.

This waste monitoring results in significant economic savings for councils or entities responsible for waste management. Thus, several reports estimate that these “intelligent solutions for collection and treatment can reduce costs between 20% and 40%”.

Use these three real examples to show the benefits that can be obtained by adopting an intelligent waste system:

• In Cascais (Portugal), sensors placed in underground containers have allowed collection to take place when the tank is at 80% instead of
  to 40% as was done initially.
• Dublin Airport has gone from emptying 1200 garbage cans a day to just 93.
• South Staffordshire, a non-metropolitan district in the NW of Birmingham (United Kingdom), has managed to save 380,000 British pounds (more than 430,000 euros) per year thanks to a system for optimizing waste collection routes

An efficient and safe waste collection system is one of the services most valued by city residents and visitors, so why not trust technology and allow the containers themselves to make an appointment with the garbage truck?