An Eco-Friendly Student Passion Project for VT Hacks 11

The developers Layla and Rayan, worked together to build an idea that started as a concept at their first hackathon. Since then, their concept and technical abilities have come a long way.

Background

We initially recognized that on our college campus, we have three methods of waste disposal: trash, recycling, and compost. However, most of the time we found ourselves just throwing everything in the trash because it can be confusing to know when to use the other bins. We also learned that if you pick the wrong bin the entire contents of that bin have to be thrown away because it is compromised.

So, we wanted to build a product that could put those confusions to rest and tell you exactly which bin your waste item belongs to.

Present Day

Now we present to you, an object detection app that will scan waste items to determine the most eco-friendly method of disposal.

Challenges

Our biggest challenge was getting the TensorFlow dependencies to be compatible with iOS, specifically, Xcode and CocoaPods had trouble finding our dependencies initially.