yestrashCAN!

Inspiration

As a team of Stanford students, we see a lot of the effort Stanford invests into sustainable living reflected in our everyday lives. A sustainability initiative that we interact with daily is Stanford's waste separation trash cans. Stanford provides a "waste station" that allows students to separate their waste into cans for recyclables, compost, and landfill. However, we've noticed that this kind of campaign relies too heavily on the attention of the trash can users. Students constantly misplace waste items, leading to compostable items in the landfill, or even worse, whole compost bins being contaminated.

Cross-waste contamination is a bigger problem than it seems. If compost and recycling bins are contaminated by other types of waste, sustainability efforts like Stanford's can often do more harm than good. Plastics in compost are folded into fertilizer, introducing severely harmful microplastics into the soil. Glass placed in wrong disposal areas has a chance of harming machinery, people, and animals.

We were very disturbed by the idea of just a second of inattention as the cause for an effort going from helping the environment to harming it. This hackathon project is the result of our alarm.

What it does

yestrashCAN makes increasing sustainability effortless for both parties and encourages consumers to learn about proper waste disposal in a passive, non-intrusive way.

When a user approaches a set of trash cans with yestrashCAN installed on it, yestrashCAN's front-facing camera will use computer vision to classify the waste item in the user's hand and trigger the correct trash can to lift its lid, simplifying the user's interaction with waste disposal.

The camera also tracks the fullness of each trash can, In the future, users will be able to use a button override to open an alternate trash can as a more sanitary alternative to opening a trash can lid.

yestrashCAN is modular and built to fit any kind of trash can. yestrashCAN also has a web app and mobile interface for maintenance workers that tracks each can's waste level and last time changed. Being able to see the status of all the trash cans on campus can increase the efficiency of the worker, minimize the amount of trash bags used, and ensure consumers won't be forced to migrate their trash from an accurate but overflowing trash can to another unsuitable can.

What's next for yestrashCAN

Putting extra features (override button being used to further train sets of trash cans, more interactive display, a possible mobile app for maintenance workers) into practice