Garbage Sorter

Test run

Inspiration

As students, we don't have time to think about where to throw away certain waste products. The waste containers are labelled vaguely and students often throw away their garbage in the wrong places. To educate these students, provide a regulated system and promote a more sustainable environment, we thought of the idea of an application that would easily direct students to throw away their trash in the correct bins. In addition, certain locations on campus would have bins specially made to collect certain recyclable and reusable items that students can drop their recyclables at and redeem points. This incentive would attract users and motivate them to be mindful of the environment.

What it does

Garbage Sorter is an application that tells users where their trash should be disposed. Broken down into various categories (Waste, Compost, Recycling, Hazardous Waste), users can find information on which categories their trash belongs in. In addition, Garbage Sorter was intended to include a database containing descriptions and images of the items as well as the locations of the bins on campus that collect each particular item.

How we built it

We followed many tutorials and slowly formed our code. We also researched how trash should be separated into different waste containers for our program. In the process, we educated ourselves on making mindful choices while disposing of waste. We had to learn the mechanics of Android Studio and navigate it. We created multiple Activities in our application and categorized them and connected them to each other. We worked together on the front end as well as the back end development. We also learned about and added some design elements in our final application.

Challenges we ran into

Because we were not familiar with using certain programs, we spent a lot of time picking which development software to work with. After deciding upon Android Studio, we struggled with our program not loading due to a glitch. We also had to figure out how to fix certain bugs that appeared in our program. Although we did not lose any data, this slowed us down and created obstacles.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of how we taught ourselves how to use Android Studio in a very short period of time as students who are very much new to hands-on programming. We spent a significant amount of time figuring out how to work with the program. We also worked very well together despite the time pressure. Additionally, we are proud of our overall idea which aligns with the themes of SD Hacks 2019.

What we learned

None of the group members had used Android Studio to create applications before. As freshmen, we were more comfortable programming with simpler, purely java IDE's like NetBeans. Through this project, we all received exposure to programming on new platforms and interfaces. We spent the majority of our time learning the mechanics of Android Studio.

What's next for Garbage Sorter

To further our project, we would like to create a Database which has entries describing each of the waste products. We would also like to pin locations with those specific waste containers throughout the UC San Diego campus. We would like to include images which help the users understand exactly where to dispose of their waste.