Smart Waste Collection

Inspiration

With the recent uproar of St Paul's new waste collection scheme and the general increase in waste we generate globally, why not get smarter about collecting our various waste streams? Maybe we make our individual trash and recycling bins (or make collective ones) smarter by having IOT connectivity with mobile apps to:

pay for what you trash
get credit for recycling (maybe even get paid!? like solar energy credits)
schedule pick-ups only when it needs to be
encourage more accurate trash collection
encourage more food scrap, e-waste or other waste streams properly instead of illegal dumping
maybe make it more fun?? :)

I'm thinking this is a combination of Uber for ease of locating/registering your trash can/dumping your waste, and Fedex for waste collectors to know when to pick up what.

Step 1: Build out the user experience of creating the "waste bank" where you deposit and get billed or get credits. Step 2: Strategize prototyping efforts between digital and physical (thinking smartphone for digital experience receiving inputs from an Arduino+sensors, communicating via NFC/RFID/Bluetooth)

Depending on the team members, we could shift scope from general trash collection at home to a specific setting (e-waste? medical-waste in hospital? other?)

I can bring various IOT devices to play around with (Digi wireless kit, arduino, rasp pi, RFID module, Bluetooth module, various sensors, Leds) but if others are interested, we can think of how the UX of the process could go and mock up wireframes for the whole process, focus on the smart container physical prototyping, or both! I saw some info on using the RFID tag with your smartphone to navigate to a specific website which sounds like a cool way to incorporate the UX for users or for waste collectors.

What it does

How I built it

Physical: container, Digi wireless kit, arduino, rasp pi, RFID module, Bluetooth module, various sensors, Leds Mobile app can be as advanced as we want - paper, smart powerpoint, app dev