Smart Cycle

A SMART way to reCYCLE. The UN has declared that by 2030, climate change will become irreversible. We're here to reverse it.

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Inspiration

The UN has declared that by 2030, climate change will be irreversible. Smart Cycle is here to reverse it. Climate change is a silent killer and we are going to create awareness about it. Air pollution is deadly as landfills emit greenhouse gasses that are creating a layer around our planet trapping heat. Infact, our planet has become 1℃ hotter in the past year. Water pollution is also deadly. Over 500 trillion tons of trash are in our ocean right now. This has caused over 100 million marine animals to die each year. Additionally, as chemicals from trash seep into rivers, we are poisoned as we drink the water. Lastly, land pollution is becoming a huge issue. Cities are now being built on land including Fremont, the city we are from. That’s why we wanted to create an app that makes recycling easier so that there is reduced landfill on our planet.

What it does

Our app uses the Google Cloud API after users take a picture of the object they want to throw away. This then notifies the user whether the object goes in the trash, recycling, or compost. Then the user has an option to share this to people. This can cause others to use our app so that everyone begins cutting down on how much trash accumulates at their house. The user also can receive information on their pollution indexes in their city and other useful information. It provides statistics about climate change in their local areas so that users understand how important it is to put their trash in the right bins.

How we built it

First we used the expo-camera api to take a picture from our app and send that to the Google Cloud API. The Google Cloud API then returned what it saw in the image. We found the common descriptions of trash, recyclables, compost and created a list that our code would then search through to find if the image can be trashed, recycled, or composted. From there, the user can share their image using expo-sharing api. We then created an information page. We used online data about cities in our area to create a 2d array where based on the location, different information about the city would show up. We used expo-location api to pinpoint the location of the user. Finally, the user can start again by clicking on the “Start Again” button.

Challenges we ran into

We are still new to using Google Cloud API and other expo apis, so we faced challenges working with them.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

When our app first ran properly we all cheered. It was beautiful seeing how our hard-work paid off in the end. Additionally, we were extremely proud that a group of us three girls in our bedroom were able to create an app that has the potential to change the world.

What we learned

We learned how to maneuver react-native and how to understand the Google Cloud API. It was also our first time to use the location finder to know which country our users were from. We also learnt how to design the app and how aesthetics played a role.

What's next for Smart Cycle

We hope to have a point system in which after our user recycles enough, they receive a certain amount of points. This will promote them to continue to recycle as they can earn stars and share their success with their friends. This can also be connected to the government as after a certain number of stars, the government will give you money in exchange for the amount of recycled materials. This would require a database in our app, which we would have to learn how to make. We also hope to use data scrappers to find info about different cities rather than manually storing info into our code. If we had had more time, it may have been a possibility to try.

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