The Only Cans

Inspiration

Our project was motivated by inspiration from a speaker at the 2024 Pittsburgh TechFest. Rachael Afolabi had a talk at the convention centered on Language Preservation and emphasized how conservation and sustainability is an extremely important focus as we move into the future of tech. We as a group took that as inspiration and looked at our area specifically for ways sustainability could come into play. Waste management is a very outdated system and taking that into account we came up with the idea to maximize the efficiency of waste management companies and decrease local pollution rates for the areas of users. This way both communities and companies are benefitted through sustainable innovation!

What it does

The site tracks local trash can locations with pictures and coordinates included and allow users to add to the dataset and upload more trashcans. The users are also able to update the status of a public trash can as full which notifies the relevant waste management company. There is also a map with all the locations available as well.

How we built it

We coded the user interface in HTML, javascript, and CSS, and then the applications on the website are coded in java.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into issues pushing the git code onto the domain, where the code would run locally but not when it was accessed elsewhere. We managed this problem by altering our upload method and that enabled the code to run when the site is accessed separately.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of being able to effectively delegate tasks and work as a team, especially because that allowed us to create a viable and relevant hack. We were also able to get a real dataset together of +70 trash cans in the Oakland area which would not have been possible without our volunteer data collection squad.

What we learned

We learned more about how to work as a team, about backend and frontend coding, and about sustainability in a general sense through project research.

What's next for The Only Cans

The future of OnlyCans includes expanding our dataset through advertising to more communities to expand its reach. We are currently set up for success with five different social media accounts advertising the website as well as ways to contact the team with any questions, issues, or collaboration opportunities. With consistent social media interaction and greater user interaction our application would be more and more effective and the data would be helpful to many different companies and communities it is used by.

Instagram: @theonlycanss Facebook: @The Only Cans Twitter: @TheOnlyCanss Tiktok: @the.only.cans Youtube: @TheOnlyCans