Nowadays, the technology offers accurate and real-time information about the filling of street bins or containers in the city and a district of cleaning company’s operation. This significantly improves the quality of services and reduces the cost of operations. The main element providing knowledge about filling levels is a battery powered radio sensor with LPWAN technology built into a container or a street bin with autonomous work throughout the bin’s entire life cycle.
The sensor checks several times a day whether the bin is full and using LPWAN network, transmits information to the analytical application collecting data about fills in all bins. Based on the data, the system determines the optimal route and dates of arrival for picking vehicles. This allows to avoids the situation when the bins are empty or when they are already overfilled. Finally, it improves the quality of services (namely cleanliness in the city), reduces amount of consumed fuel, minimizes the workload and eliminates penalties paid by cleaning companies.
The advantages of usage of the smart street waste bins include:
• high quality of services with lower costs of picking and minimized work of people when a supply of waste is variable, less fuel and people’s workload generate savings
• vehicles can go according to a set of optimal schedules, instead of “no less often than” and can optimally handle only the places where it’s necessary
• the system eliminates the inspections carried out by the services ordering party (city) and reduces penalties imposed on cleaning companies related to the overfills
• apart from waste level detection, battery powered sensors offer protection of devastation and arson within a lifetime of waste bin and such incidents are promptly alarmed
• image-related aspects of cleanliness in the city, better sense of cleanliness in the city