Blockchain for Waste Management in Smart Cities: A Survey

Abstract

Smart cities have the potential to overcome environmental problems caused by improper waste disposal by improving human health, protecting the aquatic ecosystem, and reducing air pollution. However, today's systems, approaches, and technologies leveraged for waste management are manual and centralized. This fact makes them vulnerable to manipulation and the single point of failure problem. Also, a large portion of the existing waste management systems within smart cities fall short in providing operational transparency, traceability, audit, security, and trusted data provenance features. In this paper, we explore the key role of blockchain technology in managing waste within smart cities as it can offer traceability, immutability, transparency, and audit features in a decentralized, trusted, and secure manner. We discuss the opportunities brought about by blockchain technology in various waste management use cases and application scenarios, including real-time tracing and tracking of waste, reliable channelization and compliance with waste treatment laws, efficient waste resources management, protection of waste management documentation, and fleet management. We introduce a framework that leverages blockchainbased smart contracts to automate the key services in terms of waste management of smart cities. We compare the existing blockchain-based waste management solutions based on important parameters. Furthermore, we present insightful discussions on several ongoing blockchain-based research projects and case studies to highlight the practicability of blockchain in waste management. Finally, we present open challenges that act as future research directions.

Waste management: A comprehensive state of the art about the rise of blockchain technology

“…Data coming from Industrial IoT devices (IIoT), and stored within a blockchain system, is proposed to record water consumption, industrial wastewater generation, and wastewater treatment (Hakak et al, 2020). Data from IoT devices could also be used to optimize the routing of collection trucks (Zhang, 2019;Latif et al, 2019;Ahmad et al, 2021a;Sandhiya and Ramakrishna, 2020), i.e. a Smart…”

“…Due to the lack of waste traceability technologies, in most cases, the information is collected manually by the operators, for example, on paper notes, and then digitized in centralized systems. Data can be subject to errors, sometimes voluntarily, given the lack of real-time synchronization (Ahmad et al, 2021a). Because of the complexities of this context, the use of information and communications technology (ICT) appears to be the most promising and effective way to properly monitor and control waste management and recycling.…”

Building the Bridge to a Participatory Citizenship: Curricular Integration of Communal Environmental Issues in School Projects Supported by the Internet of Things

“…The increase in population in urban centers entails a huge increase in waste production, which has certainly become a significant challenge. Urban waste and recycling management include, among other actions, maintaining a healthy and clean city, production, transport, collection, storage, sorting, treatment, recovery, and disposal, so the collaboration of citizens is fundamental [ 82 , 83 , 84 , 85 , 86 , 87 , 88 , 89 , 90 , 91 , 92 , 93 , 94 ]. The World Bank [ 82 ] predicted that by 2050 the annual solid waste generation would reach around 3.40 billion tones.…”

Sensor-Based Solid Waste Handling Systems: A Survey

“…Waste management refers to the reduction in the amount of waste being produced and the disposal of the same products by using adequate measures [ 4 , 5 ]. Waste may come in many shapes and forms, including solid waste being produced from domestic sources, infectious waste produced from hospitals, and radioactive waste produced by nuclear reactors [ 6 , 7 ].…”