Vancouver high school students create intelligent garbage cans to help sort waste

A pair of Vancouver high school students hope their innovation using odour sensors and artificial intelligence will help their peers divert more waste from the landfill.

Amy Bach and Sunny Huynh created Bin Genius because of what they saw around them at their schools.

"A lot of students, when they have lunch, they just throw all of their plates and then their food [waste] into the garbage bin, which will be sent to landfills," said Bach, a Grade 12 student at Gladstone Secondary School.

"So we want to … educate students and, you know, help them improve their waste sorting habits."

Bin Genius pairs sensors, cameras and a related app with waste bins to alert users through light and sound, or via an alert on their phones, if, for example, an orange peel isn't placed in the compost, or a drink container is thrown into the garbage rather than the recycling bin.

Bach and Huynh used 5,000 images to teach their AI-aligned invention to recognize different types of trash.

"Students normally in schools … they just throw everything in without any afterthought about what happens to the waste," said Huynh, a Grade 11 student at Sir Winston Churchill Secondary.

WATCH | CBC's Chad Pawson teams up with his daughter to report on waste diversion:

2 Vancouver high school students aim to divert Metro Vancouver waste with new tech

20 days ago

Duration 2:01

A pair of high school students are trying to change how waste is managed in Metro Vancouver. They invented a prototype waste bin that is equipped with sensors to let people know if they put waste in the wrong place.

Organic waste filling up Metro Vancouver's landfills continues to be a difficult problem to solve in the region.

The latest available waste composition study shows out of a sample of waste collected over four weeks, nearly one quarter of it was compostable organics.

Metro Vancouver for years has had a goal to recycle 80 per cent of the region's waste, but has been stuck at around 65 per cent.

"We want to continue to do better," said Sarah Kirby-Yung, chair of the Metro Vancouver Zero Waste Committee and a Vancouver city councillor.

"We have more people that are moving into the region and, of course, landfills fill up and there's only so much space. So it's really about how do we continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to reduce the amount of waste that is produced per person?"

Kirby-Yung says part of the solution will be to use technology and AI to better sort waste — which puts Bin Genius ahead of the curve.

Bach and Huynh have entered their invention into a Science Fair Foundation competition, which could net them a $5,000 prize if they win.

They plan to continue to work on their prototype invention in hopes of scaling it up and eventually introducing it to all 89 elementary and 18 secondary schools in the Vancouver school district. They estimate implementation would cost about $100,000.

"We want to make something like this for the future and for the younger generation," said Bach.