Inspiration
Landfills in the United States are overflowing with over 2 million plastic bottles and matters have become even worse due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The coronavirus pandemic has sparked a rush for plastic. In fact, I have noticed that sales in products such as plastic water bottles and soda cans have greatly increased in my area. Although some people in my community regularly recycle, some do not even know what recycling is, so they simply throw away products that can be recycled. As a solution to this problem, I created Recycle4Ever, a website that compiles all one needs to know about recycling.
Additionally, I also noticed, that several people in my community were struggling while identifying products that can be recycled. So, I thought it would be helpful if there was a way for them to quickly get the answers they need. So, to accompany Recylce4Ever I created the Recycle4Ever Buddy App.
What it does
Recycle4Ever is a responsive website and it provides its users with absolutely everything they need to know about recycling (from what they can recycle, how they can recycle, things they can recycle, and innovative ideas to reuse things in their homes). Additionally, if users are unsure whether an object can be recycled they can use the Recycle Buddy App in which they manually need to answer a few questions and the app will determine whether the product can be recycled and if so how.
How I built it
I built Recycle4Ever on using HTML5, CSS, and JS. I created the Recycle Buddy App using Java.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
I am definitely very proud of completing so much of my website in such less time. Additionally, I am also proud of the layout of my website.
What I learned
While creating my website, I experimented with various things and features which in the end led me to learning several new things. For example, I tried to incorporate a Google Maps API. It took me quite a few tries but in the end I was able to include a map in my footer. I figured out how to create a Parallax effect on my homepage using only CSS. I learned how I can add animations to my website using JS and HTML. Overall, creating the website really helped me develop my web development skills.
What's next for Recycle4Ever
In the future, I want to make Recycle4Ever more interactive and fun for users. For it's companion, Recycle Buddy, I want to use image recognition in Python and allow users to take a picture of the product they want to know can be recycled. Using this picture I want the app to determine whether the product can be recycled or not.
