Dunya

IBM Weekend Challenge | Award winning Project

HMW design an app to help users understand their contribution towards the environment when Recycling Right?

What is this?

Dunya is a tool to help people do their part and take the first step towards change in their local community. it helps people like Jerem: 1) Get organized about the best practices in recycling and reusing. 2) Take action in an efficient and easy way, and encourage others to do the same. 3) Be informed about the processes that we should support. 4)Support the different organizations fighting for the environment and 5) Connect and share the mission to Recycle Right!

Our team is made by people from different parts of the world, we believe this diversity is our strength. Therefore, we named our project Dunya, which means “earth” in more than 20 languages.

Check out the application here

Persona

Jeremy is a busy man, works a job from 9 to 5, gets home to his kids and relaxes for the rest of the night. He is in his early 30s and is increasingly conscious about the environment his two daughters (as well as other children) will inherit. So, he wants to take a more active part in doing small things that help the environment without compromising other aspects of his life. He struggles to find sufficient information about the best ways to dispose of recyclables in his house. However, it is unclear how he can determine what can or cannot be recycled, plus there is not much information about what happens to the trash he recycles. Jeremy and others like him, inspired us to develop Dunya, a mobile device app that helps them quickly and easily identify recyclable elements, know where to take them and know the process that these go through. To do this, all Jeremy has to do is open Dunya, take a picture of an item he intends to throw away, and let Dunya tell him the best way to dispose of this. It will identify the type of material through high quality AI image detection: “Trainable image recognition” will help Dunya analyze the object from the image and trace it to a network of material databases in order to reliably classify it. Then, it will tell him the nearest certified recycling units in the area, so can take and drop the item, showing the available certified recycling units in the area, so he can choose the most convenient drop site for him. Jeremy can either go and make the drop immediately or schedule the drop to receive a reminder to take his item(s) later. Once Jeremy has taken the item to the drop spot he chose, Dunya will award him points for every item collected and will show him the stages they will go through to become a raw material or new product.The points he earns will accumulate and give Jeremy a Rank (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced Recycler). After collecting 30 points, here will receive $1 to donate to a climate action-focused organization. At the same time, he can connect and learn what other fellow recyclers have achieved.