Kachra Seth

Most smart city projects for waste management rely on expensive IoT bin sensors that cost upwards of ₹50,000 each. For a typical Indian municipality, installing these on hundreds of bins is way too expensive.

Kachra Seth was our attempt to solve this. Instead of putting expensive sensors on bins, we used the smartphone in everyone's pocket. By using simple QR codes on trash bins and a smartphone camera, we cut down infrastructure costs by 90%. We competed with senior engineering teams at Anveshana 2025 and won 3rd place.

How the Platform Works

• ›Citizen Mobile App: We built a Progressive Web App (PWA) that citizens can open without installing anything. When they throw waste, they scan the bin's QR code. They can also take a photo of their waste, and a built-in AI model classifies it (like dry or wet waste) to show them which bin it belongs to. To encourage people, we added a leaderboard where neighbourhoods compete on segregation rates.

• ›Municipal Dashboard: Workers scan the bin's QR code before and after clearing it. This logs the time and location automatically, proving the collection actually happened. The system also plans vehicle paths using routing algorithms to save fuel.

• ›Analytics Portal: City officials can view overall waste clearance stats, response times for complaints, and download reports for clean-city surveys.

Working Offline

In many parts of Indian cities, internet connectivity is spotty. We designed the app to cache scans and location tags locally when offline. As soon as the worker's device connects back to the internet, it syncs everything with the database automatically.