RecycleVision

TOP 10 of Hack Beanpot 2020

Location

(RENT A NERD CONFERENCE ROOM)

Inspiration

Would you throw away a granola bar wrapper or would you recycle it? The correct answer is that you would throw it away in the garbage can. Unfortunately these wrappers are not disposed of properly. 25% of waste is incorrectly disposed of. This means that only 75% of things in the recycling bin are actually recyclable. This leads to time being wasted at recycle management plants stopping the machines to get rid of the wrongly disposed trash.

What it does

The application takes a picture of an item and categorizes it as garbage, compost, or recycling. This would help the user figure out how to properly dispose of their waste.

How we built it

Initially we categorized the three main ways of waste: Compostable, Recyclable, and Trash. From there we tried using google's API to help find labels to help us label items as compostable, recyclable, or trash.

Challenges we ran into

Prior to the project we have very little experience in hackathons and upright application development. For most of us this was our first hackathon. We had never met each other before and we had to figure out what our strengths and weaknesses were. We had trouble finding the specific data sets as well as pre-processing the data.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We have a very sound front end for the application with an emphasis on user experience. We were able to commit to a project from an idea in a weekend.

What we learned

We learned the whole approach of coming up with an idea and turning it into an application. We learned more about google's API algorithm. We learned more about front end development as well as the sustainability problem of over-recycling.

What's next for RecycleVision

Hopefully this can be put in offices to encourage more sustainability and educate workers about how to properly dispose of their waste. Another possibility for RecycleVision is that it could be implemented at waste management plants to help reorganize waste while it is going down the waste management line.