Inspiration
As people relatively new to Charlottesville, we were unfamiliar with what exactly was accepted for recycling. Since people often place the wrong items into recycling bins, and since recycling acceptance varies by location, we thought it would be helpful to gamify the idea of what can be recycled. Since some people are not interested in reading a page of text or a chart, we felt that breaking up the information into short, one sentence quiz questions would help a wider range of people get better recycling information.
What it does
This web app uses React to quiz users on whether typical everyday items can be recycled or not in Charlottesville. It also provides a link to the city of Charlottesville’s official recycling page after the end of the quiz. Users can also play again with a randomized set of questions.
How we built it
We used React and CSS. There was also a minor research component needed in order to get the correct recycling information from the city of Charlottesville.
Challenges we ran into
This was the first time we ever made a project with React, so there was a slight learning curve. We also had to figure out how to deploy this React app on Github Pages. We ended up using the gh-pages module for deployment.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Not only was this our first time building something in React, it was also our first time making software with the intention of having it be used by the public. Before, we had only made small projects and scripts for personal use or class. Being able to use a JavaScript library in this way was a good first step for us in terms of learning more about building software for good.
What we learned
We learned enough to give ourselves a foundation with using React. We also learned a bit about recycling acceptance, locations, and policies in Charlottesville since we had to look that up. For example, we did not know that plastic grocery bags could not be recycled curbside before we started.
What's next for Recycling Educator
Recycling Educator could have more questions and a better way of integrating them in as opposed to manually typing them in. It could also benefit from expanded functionality. For example, it could have a link to another page that would get the user’s location and help them locate the nearest recycling or compost bin using some shortest path algorithm.
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