City without waste!

A pilot year of the Moravian-Silesian Region contest for the best smart solutions for the introduction of intelligent technologies which will bring a more comfortable life to people in the region, save time and money, has its winners.

During two and half months, 35 entrepreneurs and associations responded with their innovative ideas. They could enrol a new or already existing product or technology in five categories of the contest (de-bureaucratisation, health care, infrastructure, transport, and savings). The Moravian-Silesian Region provided CZK 2.5 million for the contest, and large corporations as well as young people with a solver in their hand could win from CZK 50 to 500 thousand. The Evaluation Commission awarded 7 entities for their innovative projects. The highest quality was seen in the field of transport, where 3 entities won the subsidy. Most applications were received in the health care category.

Energo Solutions came with a Zero Waste City project. It is a small start-up, the development of an application which will monitor available container for sorted waste, waste collecting yards and places where waste can be deposited.

“The biggest advantage of the application are time and fine savings both for a common user, and for a city district and an entity responsible for waste collection at the given place,” Zdeněk Polanský, one of the authors of the project, a graduate from the Raw Material Treatment and Recycling study field of the TU – MU Ostrava said.

He enrolled the relatively fresh idea in the Smart Solutions in MSR contest with Luka Oros, his peer and also a graduate from VŠB – Technical University of Ostrava in the field of biotechnology, and they succeeded. They also founded a company and started negotiations with other partners.

To smart phone owners, the application offers an information background for waste sorting, a map with information about available dust bins, containers, waste collecting yards and a possibility to report any problematic place, be it a missing dust bin, an overfilled container, a black dumping site, damaged furniture behind a house etc.

Reporting can be carried out thanks to a specific QR code labelled on every dust bin, or by a photograph sent together with GPS coordinates. The information sent by the user via the application, appears in the map of the respective entity which has to quickly ensure cleaning.

The Zero Waste City application can be downloaded from 1 January 2018 free of charge for the public. In the first year the authors would like to test its operation. They will use the Ostrava-Poruba and Ostrava-South city district in this pilot trial.

“We have been negotiating with the City Office that also likes it. After the testing stage we would like to extend the system throughout Ostrava, but there are still some question marks in this regard. It will be definitely a universal application; therefore we would like to offer it to other towns in the region as well. At present, for example Krnov expressed its interest,” Luka Oros said.

According to Polanský, communication with city districts and entities responsible for cleaning at a specific place is the biggest challenge. “The system is highly complicated now. There are a lot of companies and entities involved in cleaning. But this is the strength of our application. Any scanned data will be transmitted directly to people responsible for the given issue and will not be lost in the official system,“ he added.

Resource: http://www.patriotmagazin.cz/chytre-reseni-pro-moravskoslezsky-kraj-mesto-bez-odpadku/ 
Author of the photo: Lukáš Ston