Engineering students make sensor-enabled dustbins to solve problems of overflowing garbage

In a bid to keep our environment clean, two engineering students of Central University of Karnataka have made a smart garbage monitoring system, in form of a sensor-enabled dust bin which will send a message to authorities if the garbage bin has not been cleaned for long.

Sneha and Adwaith, students of electric engineering worked on this project for more than a year, while focusing on the problem of overflowing dustbins. The system helps in determining the level of garbage in the dustbin and alerts authorities for immediate action.

Sharing her experience, Sneha on Wednesday said, "We both noticed that the dustbins are not being cleaned on time, hence leading them to overflow and garbage being spilt everywhere. The authorities could not keep a track of it. Just providing bins is not enough. After a lot of research, we came with this idea of smart garbage bin. It took us a lot of time to complete because we understood all the components first."

Elaborating further on her model and its working, she added, "The cost of this dustbin in the market will be between Rs 500 to Rs 1000, depending upon size. We have used some sensors which will send a message to the authorities and the GPS module has been used to help the authorities locate the bin. The cleanliness worker will receive a message of garbage level at regular interval and if the dust bin is not cleared within 40 minutes, the message will be sent to higher authorities".

Assistant professor of the electric engineer department said, "Students got this idea by visiting different garbage sites and which made them realise that there is some serious problems in maintaining the garbage. They started this project in the month of October 2018 and finished it in March 2019."

"This system will detect the level of garbage and accordingly it will send a text message to the concerned worker. This will make them clean the dustbin on time. These messages will even go to the high authorities if there is any negligence," he added.