Problem observed!
Overflowing bins in malls are frequently observed, especially in crowded shopping areas with high human traffic! As such, this creates a negative shopping experience for the public who cannot find a bin with space to throw their trash. There could also be more pests around and odour, which is not a vibe.

More importantly, it becomes incredibly inconvenient and tough for cleaners to clear the overflowing trash & clean the bin that is extra dirty due to the excess trash. With more trash stuffed into the bin, there is higher risk of the trash bags tearing too.

For cleaners, it can be time-consuming and labour-intensive to have to keep taking additional unnecessary trips to check on the fullness of various bins.

Current solution

Big Belly Smart Bins:

  1. Equipped with a waste compactor to “squash down” waste, allowing it to hold 5 times the waste volume (~1000 litres)
  2. Also equipped with a fullness indicator (red LED) + cloud-based monitoring of their fullness

bigbelly-smart-waste-bin-high-capacity-HC5

These bins can be found in NTU also!

Gaps identified with current solution

  1. No latch-locking mechanism — this means that the public can continue stuffing their trash into an overflowing bin
  2.  Compacting function can result in problems such as compacting arm being blocked, compacting arm becoming dirty easily and hence requiring extra cleaning which inconvenience cleaners, some materials are unable to be compacted e.g. glass
  3.  Since this bin can hold up to 5 loads of trash, the rubbish is left to accumulate for a longer period of time, which can lead to worse odours.

So given the problem and the gaps identified with the current solution, what are we trying to achieve?

Advantages of our solution

  1. When 1 large bin is full, the cleaner must immediately come over once its full to prevent overflowing trash. With a multi-bin system, when 1 bin is full, the cleaner has buffer time to clear the full bins.
  2. By locking the bins, we ensure that members of the public are unable to stuff their trash inside a bin that is already full. Less odour is also released!
  3. With our alert system, cleaners no longer need to make additional unnecessary trips to check if bins are full or not. They can just check the status of the bins through the app!
  4. By retaining bins of standard loads, this reduces possibility of trash bags tearing.
  5. Self-sealing of full bin bags makes it easier for cleaner to clear full trash bags and reduces release of odour.

Now that you kinda see the vision, for more details, please head to the ‘Design Specifications’ page for more details of our bin!