Smart Solid Waste Collection and Management System: A Critical Need for Nigerian Cities

For some decades, waste management has been a very challenging issue in Nigerian cities despite the huge efforts that authorities have been making towards addressing the issue. Lack of adequate bins, categorizing the bins for waste segregation, regular inspection by concerned authorities, proper communication between waste points and the authorities in charge, as well as sustainable transportation facilities for waste collection have been identified as the major challenging issues. The intent of this work is to highlight the need for smart solid waste management infrastructure as a possible solution to the problems associated with the manual means of collecting, handling and disposing solid wastes in Nigerian cities. The proposed method involves using smart waste bins, cloud server, GSM module/mobile platform management system, online control and monitoring system, location tracking system, vehicle tracking system and online scheduling system that works together to automate the entire waste collection and management system. Thus, when put into practice, the proposed method can reduce the problems of collection, handling and disposal of waste to minimum.