GlobalWasteData: A Large-Scale, Integrated Dataset for Robust Waste Classification and Environmental Monitoring

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Ijaz, Misbah, Khan, Saif Ur Rehman, Rehman, Abd Ur, Asif, Tayyaba, Vollmer, Sebastian, Dengel, Andreas, Asim, Muhammad Nabeel
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Ijaz, Misbah
Khan, Saif Ur Rehman
Rehman, Abd Ur
Asif, Tayyaba
Vollmer, Sebastian
Dengel, Andreas
Asim, Muhammad Nabeel
author_facet Ijaz, Misbah
Khan, Saif Ur Rehman
Rehman, Abd Ur
Asif, Tayyaba
Vollmer, Sebastian
Dengel, Andreas
Asim, Muhammad Nabeel
contents The growing amount of waste is a problem for the environment that requires efficient sorting techniques for various kinds of waste. An automated waste classification system is used for this purpose. The effectiveness of these Artificial Intelligence (AI) models depends on the quality and accessibility of publicly available datasets, which provide the basis for training and analyzing classification algorithms. Although several public waste classification datasets exist, they remain fragmented, inconsistent, and biased toward specific environments. Differences in class names, annotation formats, image conditions, and class distributions make it difficult to combine these datasets or train models that generalize well to real world scenarios. To address these issues, we introduce the GlobalWasteData (GWD) archive, a large scale dataset of 89,807 images across 14 main categories, annotated with 68 distinct subclasses. We compile this novel integrated GWD archive by merging multiple publicly available datasets into a single, unified resource. This GWD archive offers consistent labeling, improved domain diversity, and more balanced class representation, enabling the development of robust and generalizable waste recognition models. Additional preprocessing steps such as quality filtering, duplicate removal, and metadata generation further improve dataset reliability. Overall, this dataset offers a strong foundation for Machine Learning (ML) applications in environmental monitoring, recycling automation, and waste identification, and is publicly available to promote future research and reproducibility.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_07463
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle GlobalWasteData: A Large-Scale, Integrated Dataset for Robust Waste Classification and Environmental Monitoring
Ijaz, Misbah
Khan, Saif Ur Rehman
Rehman, Abd Ur
Asif, Tayyaba
Vollmer, Sebastian
Dengel, Andreas
Asim, Muhammad Nabeel
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
The growing amount of waste is a problem for the environment that requires efficient sorting techniques for various kinds of waste. An automated waste classification system is used for this purpose. The effectiveness of these Artificial Intelligence (AI) models depends on the quality and accessibility of publicly available datasets, which provide the basis for training and analyzing classification algorithms. Although several public waste classification datasets exist, they remain fragmented, inconsistent, and biased toward specific environments. Differences in class names, annotation formats, image conditions, and class distributions make it difficult to combine these datasets or train models that generalize well to real world scenarios. To address these issues, we introduce the GlobalWasteData (GWD) archive, a large scale dataset of 89,807 images across 14 main categories, annotated with 68 distinct subclasses. We compile this novel integrated GWD archive by merging multiple publicly available datasets into a single, unified resource. This GWD archive offers consistent labeling, improved domain diversity, and more balanced class representation, enabling the development of robust and generalizable waste recognition models. Additional preprocessing steps such as quality filtering, duplicate removal, and metadata generation further improve dataset reliability. Overall, this dataset offers a strong foundation for Machine Learning (ML) applications in environmental monitoring, recycling automation, and waste identification, and is publicly available to promote future research and reproducibility.
title GlobalWasteData: A Large-Scale, Integrated Dataset for Robust Waste Classification and Environmental Monitoring
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.07463