Silicone

Inspiration

We saw that many Indian households had a large amount of E-waste lying on their shelves without proper disposal. We found that despite the obsoleteness of the E-waste, it could be recycled and re-purposed for further usage in newer technology. As we head towards an era where major companies such as Apple, Samsung and others aim to have zero carbon footprint and make themselves sustainable, having a streamlined way of disposing of E-waste would make a huge impact on the industry. Having a common platform to allow ragpickers and municipal committees to communicate with their local communities would allow the aim of proper E-waste disposal seamless.

What it does

We decided to make a web application that allows user to contact their local ragpickers and municipal committees to notify them about the type of E-waste and their location so that they can come and help the user with E-waste disposal.

How we built it

We built it using HTML, CSS, Kubernetes, Docker, Git/Github and MERN Stack Development.

Challenges we ran into

Due to the ambitiousness of the project and our lack of expertise in the skill stack, we were unable to implement the project correctly and needed more time. We ended up spending a lot of time on desk research and understanding the scalability of our idea. Perhaps more time would have allowed us to better implement the idea and create a market-ready product that would be profitable.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We learnt the skill of team building and about the E-waste problem that our home country, India, suffers from on an annual basis. We gained insights into the current market leaders and what they have done to tackle the problem and were able to identify the area of improvement in which we could work to better help the cause.

What we learned

We learned that making a product that can someday compete in the industry takes a lot of time and effort. Since we are still in the ideation stage and read about the inner functioning of already existing solutions in the market, we realized that the idea is bound to change as the proper implementation of the product begins.

What's next for Silicone

We want to expand on this cause after the hackathon and have planned to maybe turn the project open source so that more people can join on board and help in the implementation of the product. We would also like to study more about the technologies needed in the implementation and test them in our local communities to see their impact. We believe that the idea has the potential for something greater if worked on correctly.