Green Computing Trends: Potential Application of Location-based E-Waste Management in African Urban Setup using Green IOT

Waste generation has become one of the worrying global negative trends, with generated figures from various studies showing its adverse impact on human survival. Many pandemics and diverse diseases have been attributed to improper waste disposal. Waste can generally be considered as hazardous or non-hazardous. Waste management in Africa has become a major challenge, and is mostly related to steady increase in population, especially in urban areas. Additional groups of wastes include industrial, municipal, e-waste and bio-medical waste. Increased sale and use of electrical and electronic devices and components with short life span has made e-waste to be a major global concern since it causes harm to human health and environment. Africa is a major recipient of e-waste as well as an upcoming e-waste generator. There is lack of adequate infrastructure and clear action plans by African countries in handling of e-waste. Green computing is an effort to efficiently use computing resources by significantly reducing any negative effect on environment through designing hardware and software that conserves energy in their use. It involves steps taken to manage e-waste using ICT technology such as use of IOT and design of smart bins that provides information related to collection of e-waste. Green IOT is aimed at designing green sensors, green microprocessors, green RFID and other devices that are energy efficient. This paper proposes use of location-based services in management of ewaste in a given African urban setup by applying almost similar strategy employed by marketing companies to communicate with their customers. An urban area is divided into geofenced regions, with citizens being targeted through awareness and alerts related to availability of smart bins at strategically located collection centers. Any person with e-waste will have necessary information about the nearest disposal point where there is a Smart bin. Such bins are located in electrical and electronic retail or repair shops, supermarkets or specific general retail shops. Green ultrasonic sensors will measure the level of e-waste in the smart bin and the information is made available to recycling/refurbishing company so that collection process can be undertaken when they are filled-up. A lock on the bin is triggered and a LED signal starts flashing to indicate it is full. A beep sound on the bin is produced whenever anyone presses the foot pedal to open the bin. The routes used by collection vehicles are based on a predetermined algorithm to minimize emissions.