I live in the EU, where I have five separate waste streams: glass, paper, plastic/metal, RVM plastic, and general trash. They all fill at different rates, while the collection schedule is essentially nondeterministic. The only reliable signal is that they arrive at 6 a.m. sharp in trucks specifically engineered to maximize acoustic output.
My solution is similarly overengineered: a vision system combined with an olfactory system feeds into a biological neural network, which monitors the bins and determines when intervention is required.
The neural network is annoyingly power-hungry, occasionally unreliable, and has yet to support OTA firmware updates. I also have a Home Assistant as a backup for when the neural network fails. It provides a gentle nudge that perhaps the bins need taking out.
So we have organic waste (food scraps, etc; green bin), recycling (blue), and everything else ("garbage"; black). Organics/green gets picked up every week, blue and black alternate (always on the same day: so one week green+blue, next week green+black).
For hazardous stuff you take it to a depot or wait for a city community event nearby:
This past year the provincial government made it so that municipalities do not have to handle recycling anymore, but it is now the responsibility of the manufacturers ("producer responsibility model")
Oh this wouldn't work in many countries like those in the global south. Everything would just go into the garbage bin because it's less of an inconvenience. It's best to force people into rigid unambiguous categories like plastic, paper, food etc. Without giving them an ambiguous option like recyclables, like no one knows what is recyclable.
alexaholic · · focus · HN ↗
My solution is similarly overengineered: a vision system combined with an olfactory system feeds into a biological neural network, which monitors the bins and determines when intervention is required.
The neural network is annoyingly power-hungry, occasionally unreliable, and has yet to support OTA firmware updates. I also have a Home Assistant as a backup for when the neural network fails. It provides a gentle nudge that perhaps the bins need taking out.
Shocking, I know.
throw0101a · · focus · HN ↗
In Toronto, Canada (and Ontario generally?) we use single-stream recycling:
* <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-stream_recycling" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-stream_recycling
So we have organic waste (food scraps, etc; green bin), recycling (blue), and everything else ("garbage"; black). Organics/green gets picked up every week, blue and black alternate (always on the same day: so one week green+blue, next week green+black).
For hazardous stuff you take it to a depot or wait for a city community event nearby:
* <a href="https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/recycling-organics-garbage/community-environment-days/" rel="nofollow">https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/recycling-organics-...
This past year the provincial government made it so that municipalities do not have to handle recycling anymore, but it is now the responsibility of the manufacturers ("producer responsibility model")
* <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_in_Canada#Ontario" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_in_Canada#Ontario
* <a href="https://www.circularmaterials.ca/what-is-epr/" rel="nofollow">https://www.circularmaterials.ca/what-is-epr/
Is there a reason why all these separate streams are used where you live?
alightsoul · · focus · HN ↗
MonkeyClub · · focus · HN ↗