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When separate garbage collection will start working and why video monitoring of sites for garbage containers is needed

Problem


When at last humanity realized that it was creating too much garbage, the situation in the world was already approaching catastrophic. The “ trash island ” in the Pacific Ocean, the size of three France and the vast land area given to landfill, forced the world community to begin a search for a solution to the garbage problem. For example, only in Russia the area of ​​landfills for municipal waste disposal today is comparable with the territory of the Netherlands.



The solution to the problem was not so simple, because it turned out that all the accumulated garbage cannot be simply burned. First, poisonous slag remains after burning, which must be buried at the landfill according to all protective rules. Secondly, for this technology to be relatively safe and minimize the amount of harmful substances released into the atmosphere, significant financial investments are required. And thirdly, there is too much garbage.
Therefore, with a combination of interrelated factors, the main, economically and environmentally justified tool in the fight against the accumulation of garbage today is its recycling . A significant part of the waste generated by us, in fact, is recyclable materials (paper, plastic, glass, metal) and can be recycled at special enterprises. At first it seemed: all that is needed is the organization of separate garbage collection . After all, it is more an organizational and even an ideological process than a technical one.



In theory, people should separate biodegradable waste from recyclables by stacking them in different containers. Recycled materials should be taken to waste recycling plants in order to produce new goods from it. Thus, creating such processes in the style of the “ Mobius strip ” can significantly reduce the amount of garbage that requires incineration or disposal.
In practice, attempts by commercial and public organizations, and even entire regions of Russia to organize separate garbage collection, have encountered a number of difficulties. Firstly, it is still a low share of the population in the process. The labor of the part of the population that carries out separate collection of garbage is leveled by that part of the population who do not. Secondly, regional waste disposal operators in the transport of garbage can allow the mixing of containers with recyclables and containers with unsorted waste. Such facts completely devalue people's attempts to change the current environmental situation.. Thirdly, untimely garbage removal from sites for the placement of garbage containers leads to trash in the surrounding area, including the adjacent territory of residential buildings. This is another fact that negatively affects the formation of eco-culture among the population, because according to the theory of “broken windows” :
society's connivance to petty offenses provokes people to commit similar or more serious offenses
.

World experience


For example, in Switzerland, whose area is slightly smaller than the territory of all Russian landfills for waste disposal, the population has a very developed level of eco-culture. A Swiss citizen can independently carry out separate collection of garbage or pay an increased tariff for the disposal of mixed garbage, which someone else will sort for this money. And for the violators of the established order, there is a “ garbage police ” in the country , which monitors who creates how much garbage and how much it takes out. High fines are provided for violation of waste treatment rules, and video recording materials are used to prove violations .



The culture of household waste management formed in developed countries shows thatpositive dynamics in the separate handling of garbage occurs only after providing sites for garbage containers with monitoring tools. As a rule, an ultrasonic sensor is installed inside the garbage container, which controls the degree of its fullness and transmits information on the need for timely garbage removal to the municipal service. There are also modern developments including the installation of video cameras to recognize the faces of those who throw garbage into containers and scales to weigh the mass of discarded garbage.

Technical solution


The most promising in a comparative sense is the technology for monitoring overflow of garbage containers by video analytics . For the technology to work, enough data from CCTV cameras with a distinguishable area of ​​the pharynx of the container, which is processed using machine vision and artificial intelligence technologies.



The advantage is that one video camera can monitor several containers placed on the site (about 6-8 containers), as well as the entire surrounding area, which is much more economical than installing and maintaining sensors in each container. In addition, this solution complies with the principle of reusing infrastructure and data, which is part of the Smart City concept.". Currently, security cameras are already installed in the yards of many residential buildings, and they continuously generate video data. The reuse of this data for monitoring overflow of garbage containers is possible and economically viable. In addition, video analytics allows you to simultaneously solve other useful tasks to improve the comfort of the population . Here is a list of them:

  1. monitoring container damage or theft,
  2. early warning of fire ignition,
  3. unauthorized dumping of garbage,
  4. estimation of the area of ​​garbage dispersion,
  5. fixing vehicles that interfere with traffic and access to the site,
  6. the state of clearing the site and the surrounding area from snow,
  7. monitoring of open hatches and the condition of the roadway,
  8. monitoring the status of green spaces.




In Russia, the regional operator for household waste management, as a rule, does not have information̆ about the current and predicted filling of garbage containers, therefore, organizes the work of garbage trucks according to a specified schedule, and places confirmation schedules for garbage collection in the public domain for confirmation. However, the accumulation of household waste by the population is a dynamic quantity, so the logistics of garbage trucks along static routes is not optimal. As a result, garbage trucks make trips to empty containers (extra costs) or to overfilled containers (leading to littering of the territory, complaints of residents and sanctions by the municipal authorities).



Since Russian legislation does not currently impose requirements on the provision of monitoring platforms for household waste storage facilities, this activity is regulated by the market . That is why more and more Russian regional operators for household waste management are introducing systems for monitoring the filling of garbage containers, which allows them to organize garbage collection on an “on time” basis . For the population, this means cleanliness and order on the sites, and for the regional operator, this is a significant saving in transportation costs and ensuring high standards of service quality.

findings


Separate garbage collection in Russia will really work only at the same time as the organization of an economically viable process for separate garbage collection. If, according to the requirements of SanPiN, mixed garbage must be disposed of in the winter at least once every three days, and in the summer at least once a day, then containers with recycled materials according to the new requirements can be emptied up to once every seven days. Therefore, in order for the garbage truck flights to the sites for storage of household waste and recyclables to be economically viable, it is necessary to completely exclude trips to empty containers, using data on container filling and building optimal logistics routes.

Global waste management market predicts strong growthin the 2020–2025 horizon by 75%. The requirements of the population for the quality of the services provided increase with the transition of cities to the category of “Smart City”. This causes an increase in contractual requirements for the timely removal of household waste from sites and increased competition between regional operators for the treatment of household waste. Therefore, regional operators need to begin today to create a monitoring system that will be vitally needed tomorrow . On which technology this system will work, and what monitoring metrics will be processed in it, each re-operator will decide based on the place, time and circumstances.

The only thing we can say with confidence is that the time for separate waste management in our country has come andWe have nowhere to retreat, behind - the planet, health and our life .

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