CleanCity

Inspiration

Having all been to large cities before, we understand how much litter besmirches the community and the general environment. Litter cleanup is a huge problem for society -- very few people are willing to do it for free, and to really make an impact you have to tackle this issue at scale. Our answer? Homeless people. Why not take out two birds with one stone and give homeless people a dignified job with decent pay to address a pressing issue that few others want to do? Programs with this mission have been run in San Jose and Fort Worth by governments and non-profits with tremendous success, but we believe our solution is far more efficient and scalable, as it is software-driven and allows for much more choice on the cleaner's end in terms of deciding when and where to work.

What it does

The CleanCity app divides cities into little "tiles," blocks of land which can be claimed by anyone located in the tile. Once claimed, the person is responsible for cleaning that particular tile. We provide our cleaners with trash bags, reachers, and any other tools they may need. Once they finish cleaning a tile they simply drop off their filled bags at a location of their choice, send the address through the app, and our designated city driver will pick up the bags and verify completion of the task.

How we built it

We utilized our knowledge in Java/XML, Android Studio, and the Google Maps API to build CleanCity.

Challenges we ran into

None of us had experience using public APIs like Google's, and there was a steep learning curve to understanding how the whole process worked. We also had little experience with front-end design. Also, one of our members was injured on the job and had to take a leave of absence.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

To divide the world into tiles, we transformed the longitutde/latitude (which are 3D) onto a Mercator projection. Very proud of our logo as well (which was designed in-house).