A blockchain-based approach using smart contracts to develop a smart waste management system

Abstract

Rapid urbanization and poor management of solid waste in cities have escalated to unfavorable environmental impacts. This paper uses blockchain technology to propose a smart waste management system for mitigating the damaging impacts of traditional waste management services. This contributes to a healthy environment by optimizing the storage, collection, and disposal of solid waste. Blockchain, though in its budding stage, is believed to have a transformative impact on the world economy by enabling near real-time agreement of any transactions in a peer-to-peer and distributed manner. The growth of smart waste management systems using the Internet of Things (IoT) has been prevalent, but the use of blockchain in this application area is almost negligible. This paper identifies the problems associated with the traditional waste management system, defines algorithms that underpin the proposed smart waste management system, and compares the two systems by discussing how the latter alleviates the problems of the traditional waste management system. This paper utilizes smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain to design a proof of concept of the proposed smart waste management system, and hence, the system can be measured at Technology Readiness Level 4 (TRL 4). This paper also calculates the cost of deploying the smart contracts onto the Ethereum private test net.