Garbage Guardian: Revolutionizing waste management through Internet of Things and a mobile application

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Abstract

As city populations grow rapidly, municipal solid waste has increased significantly. Current waste management techniques face many challenges, including inefficient waste collection, overflowing bins, increased transportation and maintenance costs, and environmental pollution. Conventional waste management models mostly rely on manual checks, and collection follows a fixed schedule; both lead to resource waste and delayed collection. This study proposes Garbage Guardian, an Internet of Things (IoT)-based waste management model with a mobile application that supports real-time waste level monitoring, automated waste segregation, and efficient waste collection. The system uses ultrasonic and infrared sensors connected to the NodeMCU to monitor bin waste levels and wirelessly transmit sensor data to the cloud server. The proposed framework provides real-time notifications, cloud-based monitoring, waste-collection support, and a mobile application interface for citizens, waste collectors, and local government. The system’s effectiveness was tested by measuring waste level detection, notification delay, waste segregation, and IoT-enabled communication performance. The experimental results show that waste level detection in the smart waste bin ranges from 95% to 99%, and notification delay ranges from 0.8 s to 1.0 s. Furthermore, the proposed system offers waste segregation efficiency ranging between 94% and 97%. The results demonstrate the proposed framework’s ability to provide reliable real-time waste monitoring, timely notifications, and effective waste segregation for smart waste management, indicating that it can support efficient, safe, and sustainable waste management. The framework also supports the development of smart and sustainable cities by improving waste-collection efficiency, reducing negative environmental impacts, and promoting the use of smart technologies in waste collection.

Keywords

Internet of Things

Smart waste management

Smart city

Waste segregation

Route optimization

Real-time monitoring

Mobile application

Cloud computing

Funding

This research was supported by the Knowledge Consortium of Gujarat (KCG) and the Education Department, Government of Gujarat, through a Minor Research Project Grant for the project titled “Garbage Guardian: Revolutionizing Waste Management through IoT and Mobile App.” The authors gratefully acknowledge their financial support and encouragement, which contributed significantly to the successful completion of this research.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

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