Biometric attendance of workers, ultrasonic waste bins, and scheduling truck routings are some of the features of the integrated waste management system developed by a Hyderabad-based start-up that won an award.
The Banyan Nation, incubated at T-Hub, was declared one of the three winners of the ‘Innovate for Digital India Challenge 2.0’ organised by Intel. The award includes a ₹5 lakh grant to the winners.
“We wanted to develop a control centre for waste management. We built a platform that can aggregate, analyse, and visualise data at the lowest possible cost. It is unfortunate that most of the cities do not on-board the information related to waste disposal. We can collaborate with any city with our platform to improve the operational efficiently,” said Mani Vajipey, innovator, Banyan Nation.
Some of the innovative solutions were put to test in the Warangal municipality limits, he added.
Mr. Vajipey said that they proposed fingerprinting attendance system with a biometric device for all the 100 wards in Warangal, which helped sanitation workers save time and also monitor their work efficiency. Tracking the flow of waste from the bin to the landfill and alerting the trucks for a pick-up when the garbage containers were full were some of the other ideas that were implemented.
In the pipeline was developing Internet of Things (IoT) devices for the Swachh Bharat and smart cities initiative, said Mr. Vajipey.
The team also developed ultrasonic bins that alerts the concerned staff after it was full so that the waste was transported quickly. The start-up also has a solution to detect and measure the waste strewn around the bins. The team wants to use image processing for the same.
Banyan Nation wants to collaborate with the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) in the future and was keen on developing a model for proper waste disposal in the city.
