When we talk about a Smart City we think of all those services that the city can offer us and that make our lives a little easier: Improvements in mobility, public transport, applications dedicated to tourism, emergency services... In short, a myriad of systems focused on the comfort of citizens. What we usually forget is what the Internet of Things and real-time connectivity can do to improve the environment. Some of the most entrenched solutions today are those concerning the waste management in a Smart City, The most common ones are the ones that often go unnoticed.
Waste management, especially in large cities, is a challenge. Millions of people generate tons of waste every year, which could be better managed if a technological solution were implemented throughout the city.
Waste management in a Smart City: How to optimize recycling and save costs
One of the first administrations to support the optimization of recycling was Oxford City Council, which in 2012 initiated a plan to modernize litter garbage cans in public parks. With a budget of around 15,000 pounds, the council distributed a series of solar-powered garbage cans that also send an email to council officials when it is almost full. In this way, the workers save the time they could use to go personally to see if the garbage can is full or not.
Despite the initial investment, this renovation was part of a larger plan to save the council a total of £80,000 per year by reorganizing the cleaning and maintenance services.
The container, manufactured by the company Big Belly, has a solar panel that provides power to the internal waste compactor. Because the waste can be compacted, a total of 800 liters of waste can be stored, about 8 times more than ordinary containers can hold.
Controlling electricity and water consumption Oxford Mail collected first impressions from city workers when the first smart garbage cans were implemented. According to Jason Rudge, maintenance manager at one of Oxford's parks, these new garbage cans make life much easier for workers: “The garbage can we're testing sends an email when it's at 85% of capacity, and another when it's at 95%. It's great, because I don't have to go and look at it myself. I just have to empty it when it's full, so I can focus on other park-related projects.”.
Today, this smart waste management is fully implemented in Smart Cities such as Barth (UK), Viborg (Denmark), Arnsberg (Germany) and Philadelphia (USA).
Smart waste management in Spain
Spain has what we could call a «tradition» in smart waste management compared to other countries. Specifically, back in 2012 Vitoria-Gasteiz was awarded the prize for the European Green Capital, The competition, which has been won by other cities such as Ljubljana, Stockholm or Bristol.
The Vitoria City Council installed containers for organic waste, paper and light packaging that will be used for GPS reporting of its location, the weight of the waste and when it was last emptied. In addition, the fleet of cleaning and waste collection vehicles also have GPS, so with a program to visualize the position of each vehicle the administration is able to optimize cleaning routes and save time and resources. In addition, to facilitate the maintenance of the containers, the municipality has an inventory of garbage cans, containers and pneumatic collection boxes geo-referenced with data on the model, photos and state of conservation and cleanliness.
In 2013, El Confidencial published that the company Ros Roca of Lleida had just presented containers that send a warning when they are full, similar to those already marketed by Big Belly. Joan Marc Ruiz, Ros Toca project manager, explained to this media that these were not strictly speaking intelligent containers, but thanks to the implementation of a series of sensors that collect data, they were able to provide intelligence to the containers that we already use on a regular basis.
The data collected by the sensors are sent to the cloud, to which the City Council has access. Thanks to this system, it is possible to keep track of the load level of the container, the path of the waste and information on any emergency situation, such as a fire at an early stage.
To conclude this summary of the sector in Spain, we can talk about a recent case. Last March, the media outlets published that Alcalà de Xivert, in Castellón, became the first municipality to install smart waste containers. These are equipped with a computer system and a card reader with which each person records the amount of waste they recycle. The good thing about it is that the Castelló Consortium will be able to rewarding the neighbors who recycle the most with discounts, as is already the case with the ecoparks and ecomobiles. Undoubtedly incorporating the element of points and prizes will encourage neighbors to use the new containers, an essential element if we consider that the most difficult thing is usually to get the motivation to improve the environment.