My Plastic Pays

The product
Our Inspiation
Features of garbin
Locate your nearest bin
Easy interface to scan and fetch rewards
Compete to clean
Spread the word and earn
Environmental impacts of plastic

My Plastic Pays

An innovative bin that pays you for every plastic you trash

Inspiration!

On an average a person consumes 156 plastic bottles a year!! Out of which only few end up being put in a dustbin and that actually being recycled. The plastic that goes over the side today may still be around in hundreds of years to foul up the Ocean ,beaches of future generations or may even end up in landfills.

Segregation of plastic bottles has always been a challenging sport to us. Even with proper disposal methods like dustbins and trash cans , the majority of us fail to use these. Littering of plastics also causes animals to feed on it and causes a lot of damage to the environment. These littered plastics , when mixed with water and other materials release toxic chemicals leading to environmental contamination ,and facilitates the spread of many diseases.

Even though we are aware about the harmful effects of plastics on our environment, we humans are not able to stop using it, Moreover we tend to litter the plastic here and there whenever we get a chance.
So we got curious on this behavior of people and was interesting to understand that it's because people doesn't have enough motivation to get up and find a bin just to trash!!
This inspired us and we decided to use technology to motivate people for not to litter anymore.

What it does ?

This project consists of GARBIN and it's companion My Plastic Pays app.

GARBIN
You can deposit the plastic bottles/cans only into this bin , After the trash is identified as a plastic bottle/can, the respective vents open up and you can put the item in it. Then, you’ll get a slip (eco-friendly recycled paper) with QR code which when scanned will lead you to download an app and earn points.
After earning more points i.e., depositing more plastic trash properly, you’ll be able to redeem these rewards as vouchers or subscriptions.
Once it fills up, there is a provision inside the machine to crush the bottles to create extra space. And finally when the bin is completely full the senors helps sends an automatic alert to the concerned authorities for requesting to empty it
My Plastic Pays app
The QR code redeems the reward and redirects to the app. After downloading MyPlasticPays, all your progress and rewards are saved there. You can also locate the nearby bins through the app. Also, every month we honor the one who contributes the most in the collection of plastics.There is also a leaderboard to appreciate the most committed ones and also a refer-and-earn method to encourage others to join in.
What happens to the collected plastics/cans?
All these items are recycled . Since the materials are segregated using the machine, recycling becomes much easier.
Well, where does the money for rewards comes from?
We can display advertisements on GARBIN as well as My Plastic Pays app and promote sponsors for rewards.

How we built it..

My Plastic Pays app

The mobile app development was done using kotlin and android studio with firebase as the backend.

GARBIN

We build an object detection model to segregate plastic bottles and cans from other materials.
A sensor which detects threshold capacity of bin and sends alert to the concerned authorities. These can be integrated using a microprocesssor.

Uniqueness

There are many bins but none provides following necessary features.

Rewards for not polluting our planet.
Anyone can easily locate the GARBIN via app.
Garbin is smart enough to detect and process the items that are deposited and notifies logistics team on capacity thresholds.
Leaderboards to promote proper waste management.
Opens a wider opportunity for promotions and external integrations.

Challenges we ran into

We are second year graduates attempting to design and present such a huge project with co-operation of public. With our limited knowledge in the domain we tried to include eco-friendly ideas and work our maximum for this project. It took a lot of effort and time to research on the new areas which helped us to most importantly, learn and incorporate more features to our product.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A Machine Learning model to identify and distinguish the trash while we deposit. Created an app, front end and back end with proper UI that includes rewarding and bin tracking features. Developed a 3D model of our desired product. Estimated the revenue model with both investment and return from the project. Able to provide job opportunities to many more people.

What's next for My Plastic Pays

Miniature model of GARBIN fixed in each compartment of trains.
Expand our project to other plastic products.
Engage in other Eco-friendly activities .
Job opportunities to many more people.
Extend more features to our app.

What we learned

We got to learn so much in this limited time and really pushed ourselves further .We got a chance to learn and grow together. We learned how to automate the components like camera, sensors etc using raspberry pi and python, object detection and .learned more on mobile app development.