Hubcycle

Hubcycle is your user-friendly digital “hub” for recycling. This app holds the answer to all the questions that you have when starting your recycling journey. Get started today!

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Inspiration

We were inspired to build this project due to the alarming increase in the rate of landfill use to dispose waste worldwide. Most people choose to not recycle their waste, simply due to lack of knowledge and resources to do so. Our app hopes to bridge this gap in knowledge by making recycling materials and centers more accessible to the public.

What It Does

Our app allows a user to login and select the type of waste they want to dispose. It then checks whether that waste is recyclable or not. If yes, it gets the user's current location and displays the location of nearby recycling centers the user could go to. It also keeps a track of the number of materials recycled by the user that motivates them to increase their points and recycle more!

How We Built It

We built the app in Android Studio using Java and integrated the map through the Google Maps SDK for Android. We also used the Google Places API to find nearby locations of recycling centers the user could visit. We used Figma in order to prototype the initial design.

Challenges We Ran Into

One of the biggest challenges we had to overcome was remotely coordinating with three members in different cities, one being international. Communicating over Zoom had its own difficulties as debugging and sharing code proved to be a lot harder. We also had to learn the ins and outs of Android Studio to successfully create the project and saw the issue of our emulator and device managers constantly crashing. Despite these challenges, we worked our way through conflicts in time zone and communication to create a product we are proud of!

Accomplishments That We're Proud Of

The creation of this project gave us an insight into the power technology can have in solving pressing environmental issues. Users worldwide have more accessible resources and incentives to recycle with this app. We are also proud of the user-friendly UI that motivates people to recycle more through a point system.

What We Learned

We learned how to successfully create an Android app that uses the Google Maps SDK and the Google Places API to determine a user's location and nearby recycling centers. We also learned how to design and implement fully functional and interactive pages on Android Studio. Most importantly, we learned that organized planning and prototyping through apps such as Trello and Figma help in smoothly implementing the product.

What's Next For Hubcycle

Our next steps for the app would an implementation that suggests recyclable alternatives for non recyclable materials that the user selects. This would further motivate them to switch over to consuming recyclable goods. We also would like to implement an intelligent chatbot through which the user can get their questions answered about the item they want to recycle. Another way to increase engagement with the community would be to partner with local recycling center and create a "rewards" program to increase recycling efforts.

Link to Policy Brief

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FiEp9mezdS418VwLTy6gQnE2Pz86NYOML292_8KmlX0/edit?usp=sharing

Link to Figma Prototype

https://www.figma.com/file/RODyEgdWHHtbrjwG6sMxXE/Figma-Prototype?node-id=0%3A1

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