One of the main innovations our system includes is the way we take care of the garbage produced in each house. Since we are talking about a medium sized city, domestic trash represents a big percentage of the city waste. The mechanism must be simple and easy to use by anyone: children, elderly people.
To accomplish this, we have developed a new system based on “smart bins”. Basically, each apartment of a building has one or more smart bins. This device has two functions: first it identifies kinds of garbage. If it is paper, the device is able to recycle it and give it back to the user, and if it is not paper, the bin classifies it and sends it down through some tubes to the common containers of the building. We have eight different containers: plastic, metal, glass, electronic devices, batteries, organic waste and other waste. There is another common container in each building. Since each smart bin has to be able to recycle paper, they will need water and some chemical products for the recycling process, so every bin has a little deposit with a sensor. When the bin has not enough liquid, the sensor sends a signal to the common container and gives the liquid to the bin through some pipes.
The recycling process produces some gas, so there also must be a ventilation system.
Finally, our system must be safe, so different sensor through the system monitors and controls each step of the process.
Each building should also be able to reuse water. Water from showers and sinks goes to a water filter and into a deposit. This water is not for drinking, but can be used for cleaning the building, watering plants in a garden and also for the recycling paper process. It is possible that the building produces more dirty water than it can reuse so when the deposit is full and no non-drinkable water is needed, it goes to the recycling plant.
We also must take into account the economic and ecological aspect of our system. Our idea is to implement this system in each building, so it can´t be very expensive. It also has to be clean, so we expect that in the future we can find a system of filters and processes that will ensure that so much paper recycling inside the city won´t create too much pollution.
