A Predictive Waste Collection Management System: IoT Device for Smart Containers and System Architecture

Unlike most industries that are enforced to manage their own waste, the hospitality sector uses municipal waste collection systems, which contributes to their saturation. This may soon come to an end with an ever more restrictive legislation. This paper describes an energy-efficient, high-volume plastic waste recycling management system designed for the hospitality industry. Its main components include a compaction container with an anti-trapping mechanism controlled by a low-power IoT electronic module. This module can send container sensor readings wirelessly to the cloud where they are processed and stored. The system in the container is powered by a battery, which is charged wirelessly. This way there is no need to handle any wires and prevents potential wire-related incidents when manipulating the container. The waste collection company can instantly check the status of all containers at any time, which allows it to efficiently manage its resources according to the filling status of the containers. This paper describes the IoT system architecture, the data cloud storage and the IoT electronic module, including the following modules: container control, anti-trapping, data acquisition, sending and storage, and wireless communications. Finally, the most important conclusions that have emerged during the development and implementation are reported.