RecycleThis

Snap a photo, and our app identifies if it's recyclable, compostable, or trash. Simple, smart, sustainable.

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Inspiration

Recycling is a vital part of the sustainability movement, but confusion often arises about what materials are recyclable. Every day we face dilemmas like "Is this mango juice bottle recyclable?" or "Can this food tray be composted?" that make sorting trash even more challenging. To address this confusion and make responsible disposal easier, we developed a solution that helps people accurately recycle and compost their waste. This initiative not only simplifies the recycling process but also supports the broader movement towards reducing plastic waste.

What it does

Our application is a basic web app that allows users to snap a picture. Our AI model then identifies and categorizes the trash items into three broad categories: recyclable, compostable, and landfillable. The app is hosted on a .tech domain and has PropelAuth for authentication.

How we built it

We built this app using ReactJS, Python FastAPI, and Google's Gemini AI Model. The website is hosted on a .tech domain and user authentication is hosted through PropelAuth. The application is hosted on an Amazon AWS EC2 instance.

Challenges we ran into

  1. Trouble with nginx configuration for SSL encryption to secure our website
  2. Trouble with setting up and configuring PropelAuth
  3. Connecting to the production environment for deployment (Amazon EC2)
  4. Had a lot of difficulty trying to make React Native use the native camera of a mobile phone, so had to migrate to a ReactJS web-app.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  1. Secure deployment with SSL to a .tech domain
  2. Successful image classification using Google's Gemini Pro (tuned using prompt engineering)
  3. Simple and intuitive frontend with 3D graphics

What we learned

We practiced thinking with an entrepreneurial mindset so we could plan and create an impactful product. Our project required us to learn new technologies, including the Google Gemini API, the Propel Auth API, and Fast API, the backend framework.

What's next for RecycleThis

We plan to create a native mobile app version to maximize convenience. We also plan to encourage user engagement with exciting new features like a leaderboard ranking users by items recycled or personal stats summarizing the user's scan history. An improved UI would also increase accessibility and user experience.

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