Three students – M Mohammed Ijaz, G Sudarshan and G Raghu Bharathy of Sri Ramakrishna Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Coimbatore designed a “Garbage Robot – GARBOT”, and did their school proud when their model fetched the school ATAL Tinkering Lab (ATL).

“The model is designed to address the issue of solid waste management. Strewn garbage all over the place, the sight of overflowing garbage bins, unpleasant odour and resultant health hazard made these youngsters come up with this idea, which also is in sync with the Prime Minister's Swacch Bharat Mission,” school Principal R Ravi told Business Line.

Explaining the working, he said “GARBOT is designed to store extra garbage (2 times the existing capacity) and prevent overflow of the dump. Garbage collected is compressed at the bottom of the bin (using electrical compressor in-built in the bin) and the process repeated till its reaches the maximum bin capacity. At this level, the machine starts automatically, the bin moves on the conveyor belt to transfer the garbage to the transportable bin.

“This transportable bin will be sealed once full and a message communicated to the Corporation server that the bin is ready transport. Sewage discharged during the compression process is collected in trays and treated.

The compressed waste is then segregated into bio-degradable and non-bio-degradable and processed,” he said.

The school run by SNR Sons Charitable Trust is among the 217 schools identified across the country for establishing ATL in its premises under the Centre's NITI Aayog programme.

Present garbage scenario The daily garbage generation (in the city alone) is around 500 tonnes and close to 200 containers are used for garbage disposal.

“Using GARBOT, we will need only 100 containers and the capacity can be doubled and the whole process is automated,” the Principal asserted.

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