The Compostinator: An Automatic Community Composting Apparatus with Waste Segregation Using Object Detection

When foods rot, it produces methane, a harmful gas to the environment. Food waste emissions then contribute to global warming which is harmful to humans. One of the innovative solutions that combat food waste is by composting. However, the lack of necessary land space contributes to the food waste problems of some communities in our country. As a result, there are isolated cases of citizens who just dump their food waste in any available waterways or just leave it out on the streets for the stray animals to feed on. Hence, the researchers developed the Compostinator – an innovative composting system paired with Bokashi composting method to compost food waste and can monitor sensor readings by utilizing a custom-made mobile application. The Compostinator system uses an object detection AI algorithm, SSD MobileNet V1 FPN trained on a hybrid dataset, in order to tell apart food waste from other types of wastes.