Roadside bins in the city might get smarter in the coming days. The Coimbatore Corporation is mulling buying such smart bins and also retrofit old ones to improve waste collection.
According to sources, the Corporation has almost completed assessing the city’s bin requirement and planned to float tenders for the same.
It wants to go in for smart bins - bins that will send out signals once full.
Sensors placed in the bins will keep reading the thrash level and once full will send out text messages (see graphic).
In the first phase, the Corporation could place the smart bins in places where it proposed to implement the area-based development component of the Smart Cities - 14 wards. And, in the second phase, in phases, the Corporation would place such bins across the city, the sources said.
The sources added that the civic body had at present assessed that it required close to 2,000 bins and at least half of those would be smart bins.
It had nearly 1,900 bins in the city in 660 litre, 1,100 litre capacities, and dumper blazers that are directly lifted onto vehicles.
Smart bins trial
A city-based company, Zan Compute, has installed sensors in five bins that are placed in and around Ram Nagar and Gandhipuram. Sultan Mohideen, Country Head, Zan Computer, said this was a cloud-based system for storing data and the Coimbatore Corporation could plan so many things with it.
The civic body would just not only know which bin was full. By knowing which bins were full, the civic body could easily plan waste collection operation, which would lead to efficient use of workers and vehicles. Plus, it would also know if it had placed the right bins at the right places - the frequency at which the bins were getting filled would be the indicator.
He added that the company had designed it in such a way that the sensor could withstand rain and shine and would not be damaged by stray cattle or dogs jumping into the bins to feed on waste.
