Startup Europe Awards

ConnectedBin is the bulgarian winner for the IoT category

Country: Bulgary

Category: IoT

Project Aim: We believe that we all deserve to live in cleaner, safer and greener cities!

We see one of the main issues cities around Europe are facing today in the overflowing, burning and vandalized waste containers. These are due, to a great extent, to the re-active waste collection strategies that prevail – fixed pick-up schedules no matter how full or empty the bins are, delayed or no reaction to incidents, …

We at ConnectedBin – Bulgaria believe there is an easy and effective way to solve that, namely, making the waste containers “smart” and allowing for real-time monitoring and management of the waste collection.

What does ConnectedBin do?

ConnectedBin remotely monitors various parameters of the waste bins (e.g. fill-level, GPS position) and optimizes the schedules for their collection, as well as provides real-time notification for incidents (e.g. fire, vandalization). This way the environmental impact from the waste collection is minimized, funds are spent more efficiently and better service is provided, public or private.

By turning the waste bins into smart devices, which proactively communicate their status to a central system, we enable the transition to a pro-active waste collection. Namely, knowing the status of each bin the system offers the waste-management organization the opportunity to timely react to events and optimize the schedules/routes for collection, thus saving money, time and resources

What is ConnectedBin’s future?

We have developed already the pilot versions of both the IoT device that makes the bins “smart” and of the software system that provides for their management. We are heading now towards our first field trials with several waste-management organizations in Bulgaria.

For us, the recognition as the Bulgarian IoT candidate for the SEUA 17 Final is a proof of the significance of the problem we are addressing with ConnectedBin as well as great opportunity to increase at European level the awareness of the possibilities to solve it in a smart way.