Designing a smart incentive-based recycling system for household recyclable waste.

Household waste recycling is a significant challenge for society. Cities worldwide have been exploring how to reduce waste through recycling. Incentive mechanism is one of the promising measures to improve the participation of residents in waste recycling activities. However, several defects have been observed in the incentive-based waste recycling systems: (1) inefficient allocation of resources in recycling services, (2) deficient systems lacking future planning, and (3) limitations in circulating responsive feedback amongst stakeholders. For overcoming these defects, a smart incentive-based recycling system is designed using the Internet of Things and data analysis technologies. Four key components in the designed system-namely, amount pattern discovery, price adjustment suggestion, waste-collection amount forecasting, and information sharing amongst stakeholders-assist in constructing a smarter system to enhance waste recycling. A basic incentive-based recycling system in Shanghai, with data on 19 specific recyclable items from 21 August 2018 to 20 March 2019, was improved to demonstrate the effectiveness of the designed system. For the case of a pilot community, the recyclable waste-collection amount increased 229.3%, but the weekly pattern of collection amount got imbalanced, especially at weekends. The weekly pattern analyses suggested adjusting the pricing for cardboard, strawboard, plastic bottles, and old clothing amongst the six identified items (i.e. taking ~80.0% by weight) to balance the collection amount and allocate resources better for waste-collection operations. The two-month trend analysis and fortnight forecasting help to make plans rationally for recycling businesses. Under the new information-sharing platform, stakeholders could collaborate smoothly in household waste recycling and reduction.