Don't Throw It All Away

The disposable plastic, aluminum, and glass bottles and cans that we use in our daily lives offer us a large convenience factor and also a very low-cost way to package goods. Unfortunately there is also a downside to having a heavy reliance on these types of low-cost, disposable packaging — they are easy to toss aside with little thought. In one survey, 75% of adults admitted to having littered in the past five years. This behavior comes with heavy consequences. Nine billion tons of litter makes its way into the oceans each year, and nearly 11 billion dollars are spent each year by US taxpayers to clean up inappropriately discarded junk.

Recycling is one way to help deal with these problems, but sorting materials can be a pain, and managing a large network of recycling bins can be a nightmare for administrators. If we want more recycling to happen, then we need to reduce the friction involved in the process. That was the thinking behind a collaboration between a group of middle school students and Australia’s national science agency. They designed and built a smart recycling bin that can automatically sort materials, provide users with incentives to recycle, and offer a solution for the management of a network of these devices.

Called SmartBin, the devices use a series of sensors to sort materials into the major categories — metal, glass, or plastics. Machine learning image classifiers are then used to provide greater detail about the plastics, like separating them into PET and HDPE materials. Additionally, infrared spectroscopy was included in the build to further separate additional object types. Once a material has been identified, a robotics system automatically moves the object to the proper bin, with other materials of the same type. Using wireless networking, statistics about the number and types of objects collected, and the capacity of the bin, are transmitted to the cloud to aid in managing the device.

To make return customers out of recyclers, SmartBin allows users to register with the system. After doing so, a user dashboard is populated that allows them to visualize their recycling history. This enables machine operators to offer incentives, like cash payouts, when certain milestones are met. A similar tool, called the Bin Map is available to administrators to see the status of each bin in the network. It will show the status of each bin, including item counts and overall fill level so that they can be emptied or otherwise serviced as needed. This tool can also send SMS or email alerts in real time to alert about important events.

The team envisions SmartBin being installed in locations like shopping centers, schools, cinemas, coffee shops and airports. They see a larger-scale rollout of the bins as an important component in Australia’s goal to reduce plastic waste entering the environment by 80% before 2030. This goal creates new opportunities to turn the waste into a resource — construction materials, for example, can be created from recycled glass, newspaper and polystyrene.