In our attempt to develop, modernise and grow, we as humans ignored the much critical aspects like climate change, sustainability, and corporate social responsibility. We overlooked the effects of our actions and now we realise what an intense damage we did. However, now is the time or it is going to be too late for us to change anything.
There is no doubt that there is no going back now however, we can use technology as a rescue to resolve the existing issues. We need to utilize the potential of emerging technologies, like AI to solve real-world problems. And the world has high hopes with AI as AI-enabled solutions will speed up the process and efforts in the direction of environment conservation.
Waste management, one of the biggest reasons of land pollution, is one area where AI and related technologies are under rigorous research and are exhibiting promising results.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the second phase of the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-U 2.0) Mission October 1, 2021, to make all cities in India ‘garbage free’. The Mission will focus on source segregation of solid waste, utilising the principles of 3Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle), scientific processing of all types of municipal solid waste (MSW) and remediation of legacy dumpsites for effective solid waste management
On February 1, India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget which allocated about USD 19 billion to the Swachh Bharat Mission over the period of five years.
It is indeed great to see that we are all now aware and are trying to do our bit.
Ahmedabad based company Ishitva, established in 2018 is using Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and IoT to solve real-world problems in the direction of waste management. Ishitva designs and builds Waste Sorting Plants and Solutions using Industry 4.0 Technologies.
Their product, SUKA, is an AI-powered Air Sorting solution. It is a modular, plug and play high speed mechanical sorting machine designed to handle high volumes of dry waste sorting. It is combination of high speed acceleration belt, NETRA Vision System, high speed pneumatics valves operated using one touch screen panel for operators. NETRA AI powered Machine Vision helps Suka to identify precisely different plastics in mix of dry waste on high speed conveyor to sort polymers such as PET, PP, HDPE with colors, brands, size sorting. It helps to achieve circular economy by improving high rate of ejection of plastic recyclables.
Another platform from the company, YUTA is an AI-powered robotic sorting system that provides live monitoring of robots sorting waste with decision making analytics on cloud accessible from web and mobile for the smooth operations. These robots driven by proprietary NETRA Machine Vision System can learn, adapt to any harsh environment to perform high speed precision pick and place of recyclables.
The other solution from the company, Smart Bin are IoT enabled bins, easy to use and access with a user friendly dashboard. They have completely wireless telecommunication, advanced analytics, secure cloud access and are pretty easy to fit at varied locations.
Undoubtedly, effective sorting of the waste is currently the weakest link in creating circular value chain. Hence, to avoid hazardous waste management techniques like dumping and burning of the dry waste, the company embraced effective and efficient sorting system that improves on recycling activities.
The right scientific segregation of garbage is of prime criticality. Modern solutions like AI-enabled platforms for waste management shall change the landscape of waste segregation and recycling in the country . The easy of scalability that comes with AI along with the real time insights shall attract more entrepreneurs and technologists to refine waste management in the country.
Source: indiaai.gov.in
