Pfree

Inspiration

As a member of the EWB club and NSS of our college, we have conducted many cleaning campaigns on our campus and also outside and we understand the power of community when 30 people start collecting garbage others also get inspired and join hands in many of our cleaning event we have seen people from the locality whom we don't even know came to help us see that we are collecting trash and garbage. and that motivates to create a solution that motivates and habituates people to maintain public hygiene by throwing that plastic in the dustbin as well as get a community where like-minded people can come and join hands together.

What it does

Problem:- Each year nearly 1.2 million tonnes of plastic end up in landfills, and around 0.6 million tonnes of plastic end up in the ocean. Surprisingly, the majority of the plastic that ends up in landfills and oceans comes from littering plastic in public. But why do people litter in public places 1.) Herd mentality - if other people are throwing in the road, so can I 2.) Lack of motivation - there is no motivating factor that pushed the user to go to the dustbin when he can just throw plastic anywhere 3.) Habit of unhygienic - Indian do have the habit of being unhygienic, so we need to change it too 4.) Lack of awareness regarding environmental issues. 5.) No community – No proper community to conduct cleaning campaigns, report illegal dumps, and pressure the municipality or the local government. No matter how many laws or provisions we bring, if people willn't change, the problem will never be solved.

Our solution/product is an android application named Pfree. Pfree is a software solution. All that is needed is to download the app from the play store. Whenever anyone notices dry plastic waste like wrappers, plastic bottles, or polythenes in places other than dustbins, they need to open the app. Pfree will show the user's current location and the location of nearby dustbins (government-made/Public). The user needs to pick up the plastic item and go within the 5 Meter radius ( geofence ) of the dustbin, allowing the user to scan the barcode through our app and then throw it into the dustbin. Plastic wrappers ( chips/chocolate wrappers) are BOPP-type plastic that is non-recyclable, non-reusable and the only option is proper disposal. After every successful scan, the user will have a surprise reward waiting! (in cash or coupons). The more a user scans, the more profit they will get. This reward system ensures that the audience is engaging consistently in cleanliness activities. Also, we have a community feature where users of a locality can communicate/chat through pfree and plan cleaning events, report illegal dumps, etc.

How we built it

The application is developed in Android studio, the official IDE for android. For the backend, java is used. Several android libraries are also used for enhanced working of the app. Google Maps SDK is used for displaying current locations, dustbins, and geofences. Adobe XD is used for UI UX and XML for the app's front-end development. Libraries are used for integrating scan features also for reward features. Different widgets and functionalities are used to make the app more interactive and easy to use. Such as in ranking page, community section, etc., better user experience is ensured.

Challenges we ran into

Major challenge was we didn't knew much about this area of plastic waste , as we didn't have time to do prolong research we took another approach we connected with industry experts and NGOs who are working in this area of plastic waste management and cleared all our doubts and queries and got many good advice and insights of this industry