Solar Powered IoT Based Garbage Collection System

Siddhartha Singh, Parikhit Baruah, Sachin Rai and Ram Kumar Karsh

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering

National Institute of Technology, Silchar
Assam 788010, India

Abstract— Garbage Collection is one of the major obstacles

that is faced by every municipal corporation. Each municipality
tries to find the most efficient way of garbage collection by
manually understanding the distribution pattern in a city. This
is followed by the distribution of vehicles and workers to
different wards and hence creating a hierarchy. The problem
lies in the fact that this system is not very efficient and is still
untouched by any technical innovation and hence there lies
a big scope of improvement by the use of technology. What
we suggest is a simple yet robust system that is built upon
the use of a network of sensors connected to the internet,
providing real-time information about the current state of
garbage distribution hence removing the Human-error in the
distribution of resources to different areas of a city. The use of
Solar energy creates a self-sustaining system which is capable
of providing all the data that is required for an automated
system.
Index Terms— Garbage Collection,IoT, Optimal Route, Wire-
less network of sensors.

I. INTRODUCTION
In today’s generation of rapid urbanisation, management of
wastes has become a great issue in most of the cities. This
issues involving waste management can be countered through
the idea of Smart dustbins. The whole project revolves
around the use of Smart dustbins powered by Solar Energy.
Smart here means being able to detect the amount of waste
collected by the garbage bin and connect to a network of
similar garbage bins and send this data. This data can be used Fig. 1.
by the municipality to predict better routes for the garbage
collection trucks. This will ensure optimum use of resources
like trucks, fuel and manpower. This can also be used to data provided by these sensors to predict the shortest route to
understand the garbage collection patterns of an area and we collect the garbage across the city and providing an efficient
can thus place the required number of dustbins in an area, distribution network of the garbage trucks and manpower.
preventing overflow of garbage.These garbage units can also
integrate various other sensors such as Air Quality, Sound
and hence can be used to monitor pollution levels in different A. Solar Power
areas of a city.
Looking at the recent trends in Energy sector, Solar power
II. DESIGN is steadily moving on to become the most preferred source
The design consists of using a network of sensors like pres- of energy. It contains almost every feature of an ideal energy
sure, distance connected to the internet through GSM module source as it is Eco-Friendly, Abundant and most importantly,
with a powerful yet energy efficient Micro-controller at the easy to convert to usable form i.e Electrical Energy. The
center. The whole system is being powered by harnessing project revolves around the use of solar panels as to provide
the Solar energy hence creating an independent unit. These sufficient power to the electronics included in the design.
units can be placed in different parts of a city and hence will These panels are placed on the lid of the Garbage bin and
form a network of self-sustaining garbage boxes which are are used to charge a Battery which is connected to the Micro-
connected to a common server. The municipality can use the Controller.

B. Construction
The Garbage bin can be created by the use of HDPE plastic
as it has high tensile strength as well as it is one of the
easiest plastics to recycle. It is divided into 2 sections, One
for organic and the other for Non- recyclable waste. All the
electronics other than the ultrasonic sensors is located in the
base. The Solar panels are located at the top and are covered
by a thick sheet of transparent plastic. An alarm can be setup
if any unauthorized person tries to access the upper section,
hence removing the risk of burglary. The strength lies in the
fact that we have focused on the modularity of the design
and many of the parts such as the lid, Electronics Section
can be easily replaced.
Fig. 2. Physical Overview
C. Power Requirements
The implementation of an efficient design decreases the
power requirements of the system significantly as the MCU
is in the Sleep Mode most of the time. The MCU wakes up
as soon as it is interrupted by the RTC and Provides power
to the Sensors and the GSM module. This is followed by
Collection of sensor data and posting to the Server. Then
the micro-Controller enters the sleep mode again. So, we
basically use power for a few minutes in a day. The below
analysis provides a basic analysis of Power Requirements-
The MCU will be working for 10-15 minutes in a day.
During this phase all the electronic components will be ON
and hence the power usage is-
P owerU sed = 5volts ∗ (60mA + 2A + 5mA + 4mA)
= 12W atts.
EnergyConsumed = 12 ∗ 15/60W att − hour
= 3W Hr.
BatteryConsumed(mAh) = 600mAh.
analysis.jpg
The Led will constantly draw a current of 20 mA and
hence will take 480 mAh. So total Battery consumption is
1080 mAh. Using these estimates we can safely use a 1300 -
1500 mAh battery and a solar panel accordingly. 1500 mAh
at 5v is 7.5 Watt-hour of Energy. So a 3 Watt solar panel
will charge the battery in less than an 5 Hours and hence
The battery will be charged in the Day-Time by the use of
a simple Battery Management System.
III. I MPLEMENTATION
The Garbage data is collected by the use of Ultrasonic sensor
for Height and pressure sensor for calculation of quantity.
These two measurements can provide a precise figure for
calculating the level of garbage in a bin. This data will be
collected all over the day and can be transmitted to the server
at a specified time, before the dispatch of garbage trucks.
The connection to the Internet is performed by the use of
GSM/WiFi(acc. to the area) modules. The Micro-Controller
is responsible for acquiring the data and posting it to the
Server[3]. The Back-end of the server handles the incoming
data and calculates the most efficient vehicle distribution
pattern. This is then provided to the municipality which
can implement the plan and hence create a smart ecosystem
for Garbage Collection. The crux lies in the fact that these
individual units are self-sustaining as they are powered by
Solar Energy and hence creates a product that is completely
Eco-friendly.
A. Web Services
The installed web server software offers access to database
stored on the server. A client i.e. the device can access
and manipulate the information stored in the database by
sending appropriate HTTP requests. An important concern
of the web server is the Google Map API integration which
is a prerequisite for finding the optimum and best route
between the source and destination. All the dustbins are
allotted a unique ID and are recognized by the same. Their
location is continuously monitored and updated in database.
 B. Garbage collection Truck(GCT) Route Optimization
Garbage Collection Truck (GCT), like any traditional ap-
proach, will be used for the collection of garbage from
different parts of the city. In conventional systems, these
garbage collection vehicles are scheduled every day to spe-
cific areas of a city but this is executed in a crude way as
the trucks need to visit every area and check the level of the
bins individually. This approach is not efficient and hence
there is a wastage of time, human/vehicle-resources and fuel.
However, there are situations when GCT arrives, there is
an overflow of garbage in the dustbins so that is where the
IoT and Machine Learning Algorithms come in handy in the
proper management of the entire garbage collection system.

C. Methods
In megacities, the system for collecting garbage from every
part of the city is complex in the sense that there are 100s
of dustbins distributed throughout the city. A single dynamic
transit covers a large number of to and fro trips of a single
vehicle from street to depot. The generation of optimal routes
for the vehicles for each GCT is the main issue. The aim
is to utilize the available space in each garbage collection
transit and decrease the wastage of fuel and human resources.
This problem can be solved using the below mentioned
approaches:-
a) Using a smart dustbin capable of providing the live
report of the condition of each dustbin to a central server.

Fig. 3. Work Flow

The device sends in a HTTP POST request comprising of

the Dustbin ID and the number of brimful containers. This
request from multiple clients are pooled together and sent
to the Municipality officials for reviews and approval. On
the acknowledgment of the authority regarding dispatch of
trucks, the web server along with the Google Maps API Fig. 4. Garbage Bin status: Desktop Front-end
integration finds the best route along with some alternate
ones. Every truck is equipped with GPS giving the authorized b) Generating efficient path for GCT keeping in mind
users the real-time movement of those trucks. various data features such as dustbin load that is how
frequently a dustbin is used, in which parts of the city does
the dustbin be present(Populous or Non-Populous) and the
data collected through IoT sensors.
D. Generating Path Points for Garbage Collection Truck
This aspect decides the overall cost and complexity of the
system and hence is the most important part of our approach.
The major steps involved in calculating the routes of the GCT
are as follows:-
a) The priority is assigned according to the level of each
dustbin and the path is being generated according to the data
received from each dustbin.
b) There are many different algorithms that will flag the
dustbin if the dustbin has crossed its threshold frequencies.
c) The threshold frequencies will be set according to few
features i.e. Population Density around the dustbin and here
we can also get a good guess of the types of wastage disposed
of by various households using the camera.
d) The shortest path calculation will reduce the wastage
of fuel and man-power and will provide an optimal path for
GCT. These are some of the features of Internet of Things
that makes system robust.
The usage of a central server connected to all the bins
using IoT networks helps in monitoring the system centrally
and provides an efficient way of managing a large system of
distributed dustbins. All the bins are being connected over
the internet and are being commanded centrally[2].
E. Optimal Path Algorithm
This algorithm ails to find the points to be visited by an
individual GCT along with the sequence to be followed while
doing so.
Its objectives are:-
a) Minimize total distance covered by GCT.
b) Reduce the total travel time.
These aims can be achieved using simple yet highly
efficient machine learning techniques. Our task is to flag the
dustbins which have crossed its threshold value that is to
classify them as:-
a) 1 if it has crossed the threshold value.
b) 0 if it has not.
F. Support Vector Machines(SVMs)
SVM is a supervised ML technique that is commonly used
in classification and pattern recognition problems when the
available data contains precisely 2 classes.
The advantage of this technique is that with an appropriate
kernel, it can process the data with high accuracy even if the
data is not linearly separable in the base feature space.
This is the technique which we have used to flag the
dustbins according to their respective threshold values.
G. Setting Threshold Values
One of the most intriguing part is that different bins will have
different thresholds. The reason being not everyone dumps
the same amount of garbage everyday. Our idea here was
simple and yet highly effective. We will use the following
features for determining a threshold value:-
a) Population density within 200 metres circles around the
dustbin.
b) Weekends play an important role in determining the
threshold i.e. people usually dispose of more garbage on
weekends than on normal weekdays.
Now, we will simply use SVM on these two features to
classify them into 1 or 0 that is, whether the location of a
dustbin is to be put in the path of the Garbage Collection
Truck(GCT).
H. Route Display for the driver
Now, we have an algorithm that can decide the points to be
considered for the route planning. Now, we have designed
an API, that will integrate these points with Google Maps
and give us the route[1].
Fig. 5. A route with Eleven Segments
IV. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION
Today’s World is rapidly changing due to various techno-
logical Innovations happening around us. Change is often
hard to accept but it creates the foundation for a better
future. The use of technology has extended to various parts
of our daily life but it is evident that the one sector that
is still untouched by technology is the Garbage collection
System. We have proposed an efficient yet cost-effective
method for creating a Smart System capable of harnessing
the Solar energy and providing all the information at the right
time to the concerned authorities who can implement it on
the ground level, thus creating a Smart IoT Based Garbage
Collection System.
V. CONCLUSION
The paper presents the hardware design and implementation
of a Smart Garbage collection system. The proposed system
was able to provide real time updates on the garbage bin level
and process the data at the server side to calculate the optimal
route for the garbage collection bins. This provides a pathway
to further developments of mobile based applications and
complete garbage disposal solutions for smart cities.
 VI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT VII. R EFERENCES
The authors would like to thank Electronics [1] S.C. Chaudhari and V.Y. Bhole, ”Solid Waste Col-
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Institute of Technology Silchar for providing the necessary International Conference on Smart City and Emerging Tech-
support and funding for this project. nology (ICSCET). doi: 10.1109/ICSCET.2018.8537326
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