IoT-based Intelligent Waste Bin
Moath Awawdeh , Anees Bashir, Tarig Faisal, Irfan Ahmad, and Muhammad Khalil Shahid
Faculty of Engineering, Madinat Zayed and Ruwais-Higher Colleges of Technology, Abu Dhabi, UAE,
*tfaisal@hct.ac.ae
Abstract— The amount of the waste humans discards
is rapidly increasing and will not be controlled without
transformational changes. Waste management
companies will be hugely impacted with such increments
as they should provide resources for the collection of
such waste with minimum or even zero income. This
project aims to develop smart real-time waste
management and monitoring system that optimized the
resources and maximized the efficiency. The system is
designed based on three main elements; Master station,
Slave station, and Internet of things (IoT) platform. The
master pin station gathers the data from the slave
stations and transmits it to the IoT application for
remote management and monitoring purposes. The
system is powered up by using solar panels. Four
parameters are used for monitoring and managing the
waste: temperature value, level in percentage reading,
smoke detection, and the global positioning system
(GPS) location. The development phase of the system is
designed into two phases; system modeling and
hardware implementation. This paper present the
modeling phase of the system development.
Keywords—smart waste bin; IoT trash bin; waste
collecting management, Arduino, Green environment
I. INTRODUCTION
By 2100, it is estimated that the growing global urban
population will be producing three times as much waste as it
does today [1]. Deploying smart waste bin for real-time
waste monitoring system is one of the applications of smart
cities. Waste management companies and municipalities
need an efficient way to change the full trashes from all
public places and these are needed to be accomplished with
the minimum cost and the maximum efficiency. The smart
trash collecting industry is still in its rapidly developing
phase, but the fast growing applications field of IoT to
sensors and smart bins are already gaining attention,
especially, from the point of managing resources and
optimizing collecting routes.
Several research Prototypes, Commercial Products, and
Deployed systems were used to overcome this challenge.
Mohan et al. [2] propose an IoT-based smart waste
collection system. This system uses an ultrasonic sensor, a
weight sensor and MQ gas sensor which are attached to an
Arduino Uno microcontroller. When the values read by the
sensors reach a threshold, an alert is send to the control
room server for the collection of garbage. Wireless sensors
IRIS-based waste bin management system is presented in
[3]. It utilizes the IPv6 low-power wireless personal area
Network (LoWPAN) protocol for inter-bin communications.
An Arduino based waste bin management system is
This work is supported by Higher College of Technology (HCT) under
Interdisciplinary Grant Program 2018 (Interdisciplinary_645), with funding
number 103113.
978-1-5386-4844-5/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
Authorized licensed use limited to: Higher College of Technology. Downloaded on September 26,2021 at 14:28:54 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
proposed in [4]. The ultrasonic sensor is interfaced with
Arduino UNO to check the level of garbage filled in the
waste bin and sends the alert to the server. After cleaning
the waste bin, the worker confirms the task of emptying
the garbage with the aid of radio frequency identity (RFID)
tag.
In another work [5], Raspberry Pi2 Development Board
along with the Infrared sensors are used to gather real time
data from the waste bins. The collected information is sent
to control room to optimize the scheduling and routing of
collection process. In [6], an IoT-based smart garbage
system is proposed to reduce the amount of food waste. The
smart garbage bins exchange information with each other
using wireless mesh networks, and server collect and
analyze the information. Authors use two types of energy-
efficient operations to increase the battery life, namely:
stand-alone operation and cooperation-based operation.
A Raspberry Pie Zero W development board based smart
waste bin is proposed in [7]. The board is interfaced with
four ultrasonic sensors and a servo motor. Two ultrasonic
sensors and the servo d closed, and upload it to the server.
motor are used to detect hand movements and open/close
the bin door. The other two ultrasonic sensors take the
garbage level readings each time the bin door is opened an
In order to motivate the people to use trash bins, a talk-
time reward idea has been implemented in intelligent trash
bin [8]. It rewards the user by adding some fixed amount of
mobile talk-time. The prototype is simple and consists of a
light dependent resistor (LDR), a proximity sensor, and
anIoT board from Bolt [9]. Authors present five steps
procedure to get the things done [8]. It collects the plastic or
glass bottles and checks whether it is recyclable or not. If,
yes, then it credits the given mobile number.
An image processing based waste sorting bin prototype
is proposed in [10]. The proposed IntelliBin prototype
consists of three trash bins (red, white, and green) housed in
a wooden enclosure, a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, and a
Logitech C240 webcam. The Raspberry Pi and Logitech
webcam are used to perform the image processing required
to identify the waste objects placed in front of the camera.
The users are directed to correct bin by illuminated LEDs. A
wireless mesh network based smart bin system has been
reported in [11]. This smart bin detects the fullness of bin
and then sends the data to control center through wireless
mesh network.
There are many waste material detection and
segregation prototypes recorded on Youtube [12]. The Bin-e
[13] is developed for smart cities and buildings. Using
artificial intelligence techniques, it segregates the waste in
different categories and send alerts to the waste management
collection center once filled.
A complete intelligent waste management system is
developed by Enevo [14]. This web-based waste monitoring
and advanced forecasting system is equipped with wireless
 sensors network. It can monitor the level of waste in bins IoT receiving packages (Process 1, 3 and E1). Process 2,
and generate optimal route for waste collection fleet. This presents the initialization of power reading and solar system
system is suitable for municipal corporations and private set up together with advertisement
waste management companies. Bigbellys [15] uses cloud
for inter-connection and optimal route calculation among
smart bins. It provides waste management systems for smart
cities and municipalities.

Another waste management system provider,

Compology [16] uses rugged, camera-based sensors and a
web-based dashboard, to track container location, fullness
and motion for streamline operations, enhance customer
service and simplify analysis. Ecube Labs [17] offers an
integrated waste management system. The solution
optimizes waste collection routes and schedules based on
real-time and historical data. It also provides predictive
analytics to enable decision making ahead of time.
Bee’ah, Sharjah’s environment and waste management
company [14], has deployed smart solutions for integrated
waste management like geo-tagged smart bin sensors, waste
compressors, and automated route optimization. They have
deployed solar-powered smart bins, which equipped with
Wi-Fi to link with Bee’ah’s control room for fast and
efficient waste collection. Different approach to IoT and
Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) can be
found in [19-22].
In view of the above outcomes, this research aims to
develop a smart real-time waste management and
monitoring system that assists waste management
companies to optimize the resources and maximize the
efficiency. This paper covers the development and modeling
part of the project, as follows. In Section II, we present the
big picture of the proposed system and its processing flow
chart. Section III concerns the IoT platform with a flow
chart and working principle is given in Section IV. In
Section V, results are presented for the designed circuit
diagram and data visualization tool. Finally, the conclusions
are drawn in Section VI.
Fig. 1. Overall system process flow
II. PROPOSED SYSTEM
management and data warehouse (this part of the project is
The proposed system is equipped with 3 main not persented in this paper). The master station is acting as
segments; Master station, Slave station, andIoT platform. access point for the other stations where all the data is
The master station gathers data from the slave stations and transmitted to IoT platform via GSM module. Basic data
transmits it to the IoT application for remote management communication links are shown in Table I.
and monitoring purposes. Four types of sensors are used for
monitoring and managing the waste: temperature value, TABLE I. DATA COMMUNICATION AND TX, RX MODULE
level in percentage reading, smoke detection, and GPS
Station/platform Data Comm.a Limit
location. The level sensor is used for identifying whether
Slaves to Master Measures row NodeMCU Distance
the containers are empty or not in the slave station and sends
GSM module Mobile
the locations and its measurement collection through Master to IoT Data string
data
nodeMCU controller to the Master station. As a safety GSM/GPS Mobile
Alarming protocol Digital On/Off
feature, smoke and gas detector sensors are included. All module data
the measured data is sent to an IoT platform where decision GPS module/
Location Long/Lat. Precision
offline
support user can visualize, analyze and extract, with the IoT broadcasting Chart and Matrix iCloud Cloud
ability to collect measures in data analysis tool supported by a.
Subjected to the used controllers/ prototyped version with Arduino IDE
the platform. Finally, the system is powered by solar
panels. Fig. 1, illustrates the overall system data flow; the III. IOT PLATFORM
master waste bin is the main station where all readings from
other stations (i.e slaves) arrived via NodeMCU module. In The design and implementation of smart waste bin with
this stage, mainly four nodes are attached which are reading IoT is addressed for optimizing the waste collecting process
the measures of its own sensors, receiving other stations’ by maximizing the utilization of resources and minimalizing
measures, setting up the mobile data link, and activating the the wastage of precious resources in terms of human labor.

Authorized licensed use limited to: Higher College of Technology. Downloaded on September 26,2021 at 14:28:54 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 As it is IoT based monitoring, the system monitors
transparently and consistently a number of slave systems. It
provides the opportunities to build a set of data comprising
of the parameters obtained from the smart bin. The most
complex challenge that would arose while building system
incorporating IoT is the interlinking between the different
layers of the device. The manual monitoring of waste results
in a complex and inconvenient and painstakingly time
consuming process, involving a huge wastage of human
efforts and the money. IoT based intelligent waste bin
monitors the dustbins through IoT process, thereby
considerably modernizing the traditional methods of waste
collection. The system is connected to IoT ThingSpeak
platform [18] which automatically charts the data that has
been sent from master station, to enable the targeted
company/ municipality for better monitoring and optimizing
collection process via visualizing sensors readings
(temperature value, level in percentage reading and smoke
detection alarm) in real time. Decision support system user
may remotely be monitoring the waste bins network since
the data can be accessed from any web browser or mobile
device.
IV. SYSTEM FLOW CHART AND PROCEDURE
In this section, we describe the smart waste bin
framework with the help of flow chart as shown in Fig.2.
Fig. 2. master station data flow chart
Authorized licensed use limited to: Higher College of Technology. Downloaded on September 26,2021 at 14:28:54 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
The working procedure of the master waste bin can be
summarized as follow: Since the system is equipped with
different modules (i.e GSM, espino, GPS,..etc) so voltage
regulation and power level check is required. Hence, the
first step is to initialize voltage level reading and setting up
the solar system with proper power level and adjustable
voltage range. Then initializing port and pins of the overall
embedded components with a trigger of the test reading. The
first measurement processing is to read the sensors value
from the master station itself with ADC configuration and
setup. At the same time the safety protocol of reading
temperature value and gas level is activated for alarming
procedure with predefined values. If temperature or smoke
levels exceed the predefined value then alarming is active
for the master bin with high priority notification. The next
step is to initialize the communication protocol and setting
up the Espino update role where all measures from other
station coming thru with their address and alarming label. In
order to send the data to IoT platform, the all delivered
measures are shaped in row vector, and addressed with label
string. Setting the level reading in percent and sending all
reading to cloud with labels of measures and locations is
occurring at this stage with infinite loop. The decision
support users can explore those measures graphically with
aid of analysis tool for monitoring and controlling waste
collection.
V. RESULTS
A- CIRCUIT DIAGRAMS PROTOTYPE
Figs. 3 and 4 show the Communication Protocols as
well as the circuit diagram for the prototype model of the
master station and the slave stations. As shown in Fig. 3, the
master station functions as the main brain for controlling
and monitoring of the entire project. It gathers data from the
remaining slave stations and transmits them to the IoT
application for remote monitoring purposes. GSM is mode
of communication used by the master station in
communicating the data with the IOT application, whereas
the slave station utilize NodeMCU module in transmitting
data to the master bin station. The real challenge that was
faced during the implementation of the design is the
simultaneous communication between all communication
protocols that were being used simultaneously. The real
time challenge was the serial communication between the
master bin and IoT using GSM and the slave system and
master systems using NodeMCU.
Fig. 3. Communication Protocols between the various nodes
 Fig. 4 shows the circuit diagram for the prototype
model of the master station and the slave stations.
The master station receives all the data from the slave
station, in the event that the data received exceeds the set
predefined threshold level, the master station will trigger the
necessary alarms required via the GSM. The master station
and slave station are both powered up the solar energy
which is great source of green energy, this would reduce the
operating cost of the system and it is also environmentally
friendly.
The main brain of the entire project is a microcontroller
ATMEGA 2560 which has 54 I/O pins that can be used for
allowing smooth connections with different peripherals such
as GSM, GPS, various sensors, relay module and actuators.
In order to communicate with IoT application, the GSM
module operates with 3G or 4G network. Sim900a is dual
band modem working on frequencies of 900 or 1800 MHz.
For the system to broadcast its location, a GPS module
based on the specifications of the National Marine
Electronics Association (NMEA) is used and it is inbuilt
with an antenna for better connectivity to the GPS satellites.
There are various sensors that are connected with the
microcontroller which allows the system to monitor various
parameters namely, the level, temperature and the gas
levels. The level of the systems is measured by HC SR04
sensor which can measure a level up to a maximum of four
meters and the angle of measurement is about 15 degrees.
The digital temperature sensor uses a thermistor and
humidity sensor in order to monitor the surrounding
environment and it takes about 2 seconds to read the real
time measurement values. In order to monitor the level of
smoke which would trigger off an alarm when the levels
exceed the threshold, a MQ series sensor which has fast
response rate and good sensitivity is used. As the level of
the smoke increase the output voltage from the sensor also
increases and this sensitivity can be controlled by using a
potentiometer.
Fig. 4. Master station basic prototyped circuit diagram
Authorized licensed use limited to: Higher College of Technology. Downloaded on September 26,2021 at 14:28:54 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
But the main issue of interfacing many components together
is the difference in the voltage supplies required for each of
these components. This is one of the most challenging
aspects of working on the project. In order to solve this
problem, the buck voltage regulator was used. The varying
operational voltages are namely 3.3 V for the NodeMCU,
5V for the microcontroller board, 9V for the GSM module
and 12 V for the extracting fans. The main source of power
is from the solar panel which is passed through the invertor
which converts the DC power into AC. The AC to DC
power supply converts the 220V AC voltage to 12V DC
voltage which is passed through the voltage regulator board
before supplying it the embedded system.
There were some challenges faced by the system during
the phase of implementation, the regulation of multiple
operating voltage levels was one of the challenges faced.
Careful and robust implementation procedures were used to
overcome this challenge. The second challenge encountered
was in the serial communication between the various
protocols like GSM and NodeMCU. This issue was resolved
after extensive trial and research steps. The third challenge
faced was the heating of the system due to the load
associated with it, this problem was solved by using external
fans and heat sinks. For the future implementation, a screen
is being planned to be embedded with the system for
displaying some necessary information. This system would
be further improved in the future by using an algorithm to
expedite the collection process and reduce the collection
time and expenditure by following the shortest path.
Another development that is being planned for the future, is
to cascade the systems together and to use any slave system
as a backup master in order to prevent the unlikely event of
a master system failure.
 B- SENSOR VISUALIZING DATA
The data can be visualized, analyzed and exported via
Thingspeak project page. Three main charts have been
created for each waste bin (temperature, level and smoke).
For a testing phase of this project, Fig. 5, shows the main
chart “the level detection” where a user can graphically
explores the level of the trash inside each one with alarming
protocol via mobile data connection. Matlab analysis and
visualization tools are built-in inside the platform where
measure can be statistically studied and analyzed in addition
to the ability of exporting the data to an excel sheet with
different type of exported data such as comma-separated
values and Matlab script. Table II for the available data
extension. Since the data will be analyzed for decision
making so clean and correct data is strictly required.
Therefore outlier detection is being used where any value
more than three scaled median absolute deviations away
from the median is deleted with the corresponding
timestamp. Fig. 6 shows the implementation of this function
for extracting useful information from outliers values
Fig. 5. Master-station, snapshot from ThingSpeak of real time sensor
Fig. 6. Snapshot from ThingSpeak of outlier detection via built in tool
TABLE II. DATA EXTRACTION TOOL AND AVAILABLITY
Row data
Tool File Type
Matlab visualization Level,
.mat && [m]
and Analysis Temp, and
Export data .JSON .XML .CSV Gas
Graphical
Plot
interpretation
Authorized licensed use limited to: Higher College of Technology. Downloaded on September 26,2021 at 14:28:54 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
VI. CONCLUSION
A smart waste bin in which remote monitoring and
controlling waste collection is presented. The waste bin has
been built using microcontrollers and open source platform.
The IoT platform that has been used is Thingspeak and data
is transmitted using GSM/GPRS module. Monitoring waste
bins for collection management aspect is still improving and
the development of this project will focus on optimizing
resource allocation and data analysis for decision support
system users.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the reviewers and
collaborators for their valuable comments and suggestions to
improve the quality of the project. This paper is based on a
project that has been supported by the Higher College of
Technology (HCT) under the interdisciplinary research grant
(Interdisciplinary_645), with funding number 103113.
REFERENCES
[1] IBM Corporation, “IBM Intelligent Waste Management Platform,”
White Pap., no. December, 2015.
[2] A. Mohan, S. Johar, and S. Mini, “A Waste Collection Mechanism
based on IoT,” in 14th IEEE India Council International Conference
(INDICON), 2017, pp. 2–6.
[3] J. Joshi et al., “Cloud computing based smart garbage monitoring
system,” 2016 3rd Int. Conf. Electron. Des. ICED 2016, pp. 70–75,
2017.
[4] N. S. Kumar, B. Vuayalakshmi, R. J. Prarthana, and A. Shankar,
“IOT based smart garbage alert system using Arduino UNO,” in 2016
IEEE Region 10 Conference (TENCON), 2016, pp. 1028–1034.
[5] A. Singh, P. Aggarwal, and R. Arora, “IoT based waste collection
system using infrared sensors,” in 2016 5th International Conference
on Reliability, Infocom Technologies and Optimization (Trends and
Future Directions) (ICRITO), 2016, pp. 505–509.\
[6] I. Hong, S. Park, B. Lee, J. Lee, D. Jeong, and S. Park, “IoT-based
smart garbage system for efficient food waste management.,”
ScientificWorldJournal., vol. 2014, p. 646953, Aug. 2014.
[7] S. Lokuliyana, A. Jayakody, G. S. B. Dabarera, R. K. R. Ranaweera,
P. G. D. M. Perera, and P. A. D. V. R. Panangala, “Location Based
Garbage Management System with IoT for Smart City,” in 2018 13th
International Conference on Computer Science & Education
(ICCSE), 2018, pp. 1–5.
[8] rkhamkar1977, “Intelligent Trash Can.” [Online]. Available:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Intelligent-Trash-Can/. [Accessed:
22-Oct-2017].
[9] Boltiot, “Bolt : IoT Platform.” [Online]. Available:
https://www.boltiot.com/index.html. [Accessed: 22-Oct-2017].
[10] IntelliBin, “IntelliBin (The Smart Trash Bin) - Hackster.io.” [Online].
Available: https://www.hackster.io/team-rocket/intellibin-the-smart-
trash-bin-b44b5c. [Accessed: 22-Oct-2017].
[11] F. Folianto, Y. S. Low, and W. L. Yeow, “Smartbin: Smart waste
management system,” in 2015 IEEE 10th International Conference on
Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing,
ISSNIP 2015, 2015, no. April, pp. 1–2.
[12] EgbertManns, “Intelligent Trash Can - YouTube.” [Online].
Process Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx0b47sW59Q.
[Accessed: 22-Oct-2017].
ing
[13] Bin-e, “Bin-e - World’s first intelligent waste bin.” [Online].
Offline Available: http://www.bine.world/. [Accessed: 22-Oct-2017].
Offline [14] Enevo, “Waste and Recycling Services Right-Sized For You |
Enevo.” [Online]. Available: https://www.enevo.com/. [Accessed: 22-
Online Oct-2017].
[15] Bigbelly, “Bigbelly - Smart City Solutions.” [Online]. Available:
http://bigbelly.com/. [Accessed: 22-Oct-2017].
 [16] compology, “Compology | Container Monitoring For Waste.”
[Online]. Available: https://compology.com/. [Accessed: 22-Oct-
2017].
[17] ecubeLabs, “Solar-Powered Trash Compactor Bin | Clean CUBE |
Ecube Labs.” [Online]. Available: http://ecubelabs.com/integrated-
waste-management/solar-powered-trash-compactor/?ref=postscapes.
[Accessed: 22-Oct-2017].
[18] IoT Analytics - ThingSpeak Internet of Things. Retrieved from
https://thingspeak.com. 2018.
[19] S. Zavare, R. Parashare, S. Patil, Pooja Rathod & V. Babanne “Smart
City Waste Management System Using GSM”, IJCST – Volume 5
Issue 3, May – Jun 2017
[20] Sivasankari, Bhanu Shri and Y.B. Jinila, “Smart Waste Management
Using WSN and IoT ” ResearchGate
[21] U. Nagaraju, R. Mishra Chaitanya Kumar Rajkumar “Smart Dustbin
For Economic Growth”
[22] N.M.Yusof, M.F. Zulkifli, M. Yusof, A.Azman” Smart Waste Bin
with Real-Time Monitoring System” , International Journal of
Engineering & Technology, 7 [2.29] [2018] 725-729

Authorized licensed use limited to: Higher College of Technology. Downloaded on September 26,2021 at 14:28:54 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.