The United Arab Emirates city of Dubai has announced that it will soon use an army of drones to identify people involved in illegal littering and disposal. This initiative is part of the city’s efforts to improve its “smart services” and to keep in line with what’s employed in other major international cities. After involving “smart bins” for e-waste collection, Dubai Municipality will set the scene for a broader utilisation of drones in waste management and recycling.
As of now, Dubai Municipality’s Waste Management Department has only purchased and deployed one litterbug-finding drone but says the lone UAV is already providing positive returns. Initially, Dubai Municipality’s Waste Management Department decided to use city-monitoring drones in an effort to utilize them around landfill sites at Al Ghusais, Jebel Ali, and Al Warsan because of a UAV’s inherent ability to navigate to places humans simply can’t reach. However, after seeing how beneficial the drone’s could be in monitoring landfill sites for the city, it decided to expand their role and plans to use them for monitoring the city’s popular beach and desert destinations. You can find more on the benefits of drones for waste management and recycling, at my recent post in Wasteless Future News.
As Abdul Majeed Al Saifaie, director of the Waste Management Department explained at Gulf News “Since they are very cost effective, we expect to have two more drones later this year, which will carry out inspections across deserts and beaches…In this way, we save money and time as the inspectors do not have to drive around and also, the drones can reach up to places that our employees cannot get to”.
Well, I am afraid that some parts of my vision for a Wasteless Future will be outdated much sooner than I was expecting!.
