Locally empowered innovative mobile application to enable effective solid waste collection

Mr. Shihab Aaqil, University of Peradeniya and Mr. Rouzin Azar, South Eastern University of Peradeniya

Day to day accumulation of solid wastes without proper management has resulted in the eruption of several garbage flocks, especially in the cities with condensed, urbanized dwellings in Sri Lanka. Daily collection of solid wastes from households is not counterbalanced with the effluxion to the local government garbage vehicles, because of the limited availability, mal-allocation and mal-distribution of resources without a proper systemic management. As a consequence, the over accumulated wastes find their settlements in the dumpsites near public places and busy streets. The recent Meethotamulla garbage dump collapse which killed many lives and damaged the habitat, well indicate the problem as a less concerned subject. The dengue, an unsolved puzzle which is partially accommodated by the garbage heaps, also points out the recklessness of all relevant stakeholders regarding this issue in the past years. Nevertheless, there have been some measures at the national level to overcome this tragedy and recently a step has been marched, by means of developing a "National Action Plan for Waste Management" by the key government ministries in consultation with several stakeholders at national and sub-national level.

Many professionals and youth, who were concerned about this issue could have been curious to come up with ideas to find out innovative solutions for effective waste management. Since, with this thought, a group of youth from Ampara district of Sri Lanka extended their idea of incorporating modern technologies in the 'collection of waste’, which they found as a serious issue in their region, particularly in the Municipality of Kalmunai located in the East coast in Ampara district. They were keen in developing a mobile application to make the waste collection effective and efficient. A team of youth comprising of members from ideaGeek and Youth Creative Action Network (UCAN) had several brainstorming discussions and finally ended up with a product named as "CITIZEN", a fully-fledged mobile app to facilitate the general public and local authorities for an effective collection of waste in resource limited settings.

IdeaGeek, which was established in 2013, is a digital solution provider, powered by creative ideas that are fueled by a team of professionals, whose field of expertise is web and app technologies. They also have extended their realm in digital marketing as desktop application developers. Youth Creative Action Network (UCAN) was formed in 2016, is an organization which is intended in promoting the social standard a step further through innovation into practice. UCAN was initiated by a like-minded group of young individuals from all three ethnicities with the aim of contributing to reconciliation and innovation in Ampara district. Initially, UCAN received a seed grant from a youth innovation program supported by US Embassy in Colombo to pilot new innovative ideas proposed by five youth groups from Ampara district. Since the participants realized the importance of innovation, UCAN was formed to carry out innovative social projects by the youth, which could also serve as service learning projects during their undergraduate studies. In this background, the solid waste collection was found to be a major social issue within the Kalmunai region and it was believed that the technology could offer an innovative solution to the problems at stake. As a subsequent step UCAN members were entrapped towards developing a mobile application. But UCAN members found hard to initiate this due to lack of resources. At the same time, team UCAN came to know that, ideaGeek was interested in involving Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. Then, UCAN collaborated with ideaGeek to commence the progression of the development of a mobile app through this project.

Both team members discussed and drafted a plan considering the need of this app, goals, development, awareness to the public, feasibility, implementation, timeline and measures to evaluate the project. Meanwhile, the team decided to use the Global Positioning System (GPS) technology with the support of Mobitel (Pvt) Ltd. Kalmunai Municipal Council (KMC) was interested to carry out this project with the Citizen team after an elaborative session.

The need for this app was realized after the visualization of several garbage dumps near the public places and polluted water resources in spite of the collection by the KMC. The goal is to create a nature friendly, hygienic and healthy environment with reduced risks from spreading of communicable diseases within this region. Hence, changing the attitude of the general public through a systemic approach to get rid of this national calamity from Sri Lanka. Above all, there are direct benefits to the public and KMC. Facility to locate the truck and a prior notification to the public through an arrival roster, will help the public to be prepared with their garbage packs. Thereby it will reduce the duration of time that a truck spends at a household. Consequently the distance covered per day by a truck will be maximized.

The development of the application initially started under a hypothesis that around 85% of the residents from KMC are smartphone users; among them majority of the people are Android users. Thus, ideaGeek team targeted on developing the app initially to the playstore and to progress further. Besides, the team hoped that the usage of this app by the households could be the major challenge in its success. Then the citizen team decided to seek the help of community based organizations, youth clubs, voluntary organizations and religious creeds to overcome this challenge. The feasibility study of the app was planned to be carried out within the localities of KMC, through a pilot trial. Eventually, the success of the project will be assessed by the index like diminution of health risks, from the data of epidemiology unit under RDHS office, eye-catching garbage free water resources, and public places and the survey results among the public.

In the meantime, an idea competition in the name of "iVoice" was organized by Sri Lanka Development Journalist Forum (SDJF) under the sponsorship of United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). In this competition, the idea was pitched by the CITIZEN team and it got selected within top 20 ideas out of 119 ideas proposed around the Island. As a next step, the idea won a place among the top 10, in the final residential workshop held in Colombo. The team was presented a grant to carry out this project within three months duration which ends in 31^st of December 2017. The selection of the idea in the national platform made the team more enthusiastic and added more energy to the work.

The works proceeded with several trials and fixing of technical faults for a better rectification of the mobile application before launching it to the public. The app reached its final stages and a pilot launch was organized on 20^th of December 2017, with the participation of Kalmunai Municipal Council Commissioner, Engineer, staff and representatives of SDJF, UNFPA, ideaGeek members, UCAN advisor with UCAN volunteers. In this launch the app was introduced and a pilot trial was performed with one truck, in the presence of invitees. The GPS devices will be fixed in all the available trucks at KMC. The app will be officially launched and available in the playstore for utilization of the public. The members of the UCAN and ideaGeek team are looking forward to further advance this mobile application with new additional features to enable a complete technology embedded solution to the emerging solid waste management problem in Sri Lanka.

(UCAN members; Mr. Shihab Aaqil of University of Peradeniya and Mr. Rouzin Azar of South Eastern University of Sri Lanka have contributed in writing this article).