https://devpost.com/software/littr
Littr incentivizes keeping the world around you clean by instituting a self-challenge and community challenge system. Littr serves as a crowdsourced database of litter sightings anywhere in the world. Whenever a user reports a piece of litter, Littr detects the type of trash it is and awards points to the user for helping keep track of litter in their community. The user may or may not decide to pick that trash up at that moment -- if they do, they are awarded even more points for their contributions, but if not, the litter will still appear in the Google Map API that tracks all of the litter in their community. Thus, someone else can come along and claim those points by cleaning up that litter.
Our hope with this project is to inspire individuals to take action against litter in multiple ways. The most obvious is direct incentivization, wherein the user can receive points and community leadership status for their contributions. In addition, the cumulative litter report map hopefully inspires users to address any litter either as soon as it is reported, or to help tackle an extremely large issue.
We built Littr using Java in Android Studio to create an Android app with functionalities mainly derived from Google Cloud Products. Using Firebase, Firestore, Google Maps API, Firebase ML Kit, and Computer Vision, we created this lightweight, scalable, and powerful solution.
Due to its scalable nature, Littr could have a lot in store for it in the future. Implementation of weekly community leaderboards for users to compete with others in cleaning their communities or perhaps sponsored events by local businesses could help drive up sales at the same time that the city around them is made better for all living creatures.
An interesting real-world use case for this app that stays true to the spirit of it would be if this were used by state or national park services to keep track of litter and other issues in the park, protecting the serenity of nature and the enjoyment of those who visit it.