Littermon

Littermon is a cyber-physical solution that combines smart bins with a gamified mobile platform to encourage good trash disposal habits and creates a world in which throwing your trash is fun.

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Inspiration

At first blush, Singapore appears to be the utopian ideal of a clean and sustainable home. A closer look reveals the exorbitant hidden costs of maintaining this facade - over $120 million a year is sunk into keeping our public spaces clean. A slew of reasons are behind the central problem of littering: complacency fostered by Singapore’s army of cleaners and a general “don’t care” attitude.

What it does

Our team created Littermon to stop littering at its root - the litterers themselves. Littermon creates a world in which throwing your trash is fun.

What exactly is Littermon? Littermon is a cyber-physical solution that combines smart bins with a gamified mobile platform to encourage good trash disposal habits. Starting with the bin, users can throw their trash to get a 4-digit OTP. This OTP can be redeemed in the Littermon app to trade for a collectible Littermon, which is a virtual pet. These endearing pets are fun to collect and will help to promote an enduring clean culture in Singapore. Littermon also comes with an educational aspect - waste trivia that will help users to learn to better categorize trash, fostering better recycling habits.

Singapore has levied hefty fines on littering, but littering remains rampant. Instead of punishing, Littermon focuses on rewarding. From a cleaned city to a clean city, one Littermon at a time.

How we built it

We built our smart bin using an embedded system with an ultrasonic sensor and an LCD display. For the Littermon web app, we used Svelte and Tailwind.

Challenges we ran into

Working with hardware was difficult. FoodPanda guy decided not to give us burgers.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Bryan's drawings are very cute and collect-able. Hui Ning's and Shawn's accomplishments with working on the hardware components. Justina's efforts on building the Littermon collection page. Chris' attempts at making a cool OTP feature under Bryan's tutelage.

What we learned

Hardware is finnicky. Doing Hackathons are more fun when together.

What's next for Littermon

  • Solar-powered bins with cheaper hardware components
  • Real-time bin volume tracking to generate predictive insights and optimise waste collection
  • Location-based synchronization
  • NFT-based Littermon

Built With

  • embedded
  • frontend
  • iot
  • python
  • svelte
  • systems
  • tailwind
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