Conversational Bin

The Problem: Handling trash overflow on streets is EXPENSIVE!!!

Our project responds to one long-standing problem in Philadelphia, that is, handling trash overflow on streets, and keeping the streets clean usually cost a lot of money.

Since 2009, the streets department has set up more than 1,000 Bigbelly trash compactors around center city, spending more than 6.5 million dollars. These Bigbelly trash cans are promoted as having the capacity 5 times as the standard wire bins and being able to send alerts to the department when they are filled up. It was believed that, the upfront cost of purchasing bigbellys could allow the department to dedicate less personnel to trash pick-ups in long term, and reduce the cost of manpower for trash collections.

Source: philadelphiacontroller.org

However, the super expensive Bigbellys did not work so well as expected, as the alerting system that costs $132,000 annually suffers from network outrages and usually does not work. As a result, the sanitation crews have to collect the trash at the same regular rate as before. Those busy trash bins overflowed and broke down very fast anyway, costing a huge amount of unexpected expense to fix that.

Source: PERSPECTIVES

We realized that, the current approach of dealing with trash overflow fails to achieve the goal of city-wide street maintenance due to two reasons.

First, it is solely dependent on the manager side, which is the streets department, without harnessing the impacts of users. The alerting application of bigbellys are not open to public but for internal use for the streets department(as shown below). Users are missing from the whole maintenance process, while they could generate positive impacts when provided proper directions about trash throwing. Apart from waiting the sanitation workers to come to empty the trash bin, nothing is done to prevent additional trash throwing and the subsequent trash overflow on the streets. When the alerting system is not working, or the sanitation worker is not picking up the trash timely, the overflow could happen very easily.

  

The other problem is that, the high expense of bigbellys makes the use of them limited to center city, while the need of trash management along other retail corridors that serve communities more locally is usually neglected.

Source: billypenn.com

The Solution: Low-cost Conversational Bins that engage users in maintenance!!!

The concept of conversational bin is built based on these issues we identified. This new prototype of trash bin is aimed for addressing trash overflow on commercial streets within residential areas outside of center city at much lower cost compared to the amount required by using bigbellys. Connected with each other wirelessly, every conversational bin can direct users to the nearest empty bin when it is currently full. By providing real-time responses, the conversational bins will influence users’ behaviors and foster self-balancing during the lag between the trash bin reaches complete fullness and the time for trash collections. This will reduce the risk of trash overflow, and lower the cost of maintenance.

On the other hand, rather than providing information through application platforms on personal phones, which requires users to download the app, the conversational bins will facilitate interactions between the urban environment and the users. This encourages the users to care more about the streets they are walking, and to take real actions in person to improve the quality of public space on streets.

Three scenarios showing how the project works

Firstly, if nobody is detected nearby, the bin won’t make any response no matter it is full or not. This helps save energy, especially at night.

Now someone comes to use the trash bin. Once the person gets detected, the bin will then decide whether it is usable or not. If it is not full yet, the light will be turned on to make itself more noticeable, and to blink in a colorful and interactive way.

The other possibility is that the trash bin finds itself already full and unable to hold any more trash. In that case, it won’t shine colorfully. Instead it turns its arrow away to point at the direction of another trash bin, which should be usable and accessible. The red warning light will be turned on, and the lights on the next usable trash bin will blink in an active way until the user arrives.

Then where to put all these conversational trash bins? We consider the retail corridors in West Philly as a fit for our project. Take the fifty-second Chestnut Street as a example. Along the street there are some retail stores and cafes, so we believe that public trash bins are needed on the pavement. But bigbelly might be too costly for this neighborhood. Another issue is that, In the evening the street lights in this neighborhood are not bright enough, and trash bins may not be noticeable enough to remind the pedestrians to deposit their trash properly. Our conversational bins can also address this problem.

We believe that our conversational bins are Cost-saving, user-friendly, and cell phone-free. By informing citizens of where they can throw their trash properly, our conversational bins engage citizens into the process of waste management, and thereby help cut the personnel cost. Through their interaction with users, we believe they can add some color to the public spaces. Especially in this day and age we sometimes feel overwhelmed by smartphones. As all the signals and instructions are given out by lights and signs in the physical environment instead of some apps on cell phones, we believe that by diverting people away from cell phones we are bringing them back and closer to the real world of urban spaces.

Our project may also contribute to the neighborhood by illuminating the streets at night, reminding and encouraging the public to deposit trash properly and raising their awareness of public sanitation. In this way, we reach our goal to avoid trash overflow and carry out waste management effectively.

Most importantly, our trash bin is conversational. Our conversational bin can communicate with both users and other bins through timely self-report of locations and conditions.

Our prototype

The hardware we are using are three Arduino unos, three bread boards to collect our components, and three batteries to power them.

Then what and how are we going to sense data from the inside and outside of the trash bin? First we are going to use a PIR motion sensor to detect if there is a person is approaching.  Then the IR break beam is attached inside the trash bin. If the trash bin is full, the trash will block the infrared beam between the pair of the sensor and the sensor will send signal to us.

And how are we going to respond to the data we sensed? Firstly, in order to communicate between different trash bins, we are using a pair of Bluetooth. If one trash bin is full, the Bluetooth on this trash bin will tell another nearby available trash bin to light up. At the same time, the servo motor on the trash bin will rotate to a certain degree, and the arrow attached on the servo motor will rotate as well and point to the other trash bin. The red led on attached on the arrow will light up simultaneously, so the pedestrians will know clearly that this trash bin is full and where is the next available trash bin.

There are many electronical parts attached on our trash bin, and sometimes the trashes can be dirty and damp, so in order to protect our electronic components, we build a double-layer trash bin. The trashes are placed in the inner layer of the bin, and all of our components inside the trash bin are attached between the inner layer and outer layer, so the trashes and electronic parts are separated.

Video: this is how our prototype works!

In conclusion, this is just a prototype and we are currently not able to fully realize our envisions due to the limitation of time and technology, but we are trying to build our prototype as close as possible. Typically, advanced and fancy devices cost more money, and we want to lower our budget for this trash bin as possible as we can. Since we are building a low-cost trash bin, we don’t want it to be expensive. And in the real world, residents may not want to spend too much money on buying new and expensive trash bins as well.

In the future, we expect to place our low-cost conversational bin in more neighborhoods, but our trash bin is not intended to replace big belly. Instead, it is a supplement for big belly. Since big belly is comparatively expensive, it is better to locate it in high-density areas where there are likely to generate more trashes, for example, the center city. Our trash bin is even possible to build on regular trash bins by simply adding another layer containing all of our components. Building an add-on to the regular trash bin will be more cost-efficient, since we don’t need to replace the existing trash bins and people may be more likely to use our product.

Thank you!

Team member: Ge Qu, Huiling He, Yichao Jia