Tweet This
Environmental Pollution
DEPOSITPHOTOS ENHANCED BY COGWORLDOn Earth Day, 2019, the National Science Foundation has awarded Litterati a second grant in the amount of $750,000 to advance its machine learning and further its mission to create a litter-free world by using data to plot and identify litter across the planet. The grant is part of the National Foundation’s Small Business Innovation Award and is the second grant awarded to Litterati, bringing the total amount of the award to $1 million.
We are pleased to accept this grant from the National Science Foundation. To many people, litter is someone else’s problem to solve, but unfortunately, it is something that impacts us all - from degrading our environment to killing wildlife and infecting our food supply,”
said Litterati Founder and CEO, Jeff Kirschner.
We want to leverage the power of technology and AI to create a platform that can incentivize collective action across the planet for our greater good.”
How It Works
Litterati uses its mobile app to apply a crowdsourced approach to data and cleanup of litter around the world. The app and behavior it encourages is simple - see a piece of litter where it doesn’t belong? Take a picture and tag it. The app will apply a geo-tag
and timestamp the picture, and those pictures in aggregate create a robust database of litter maps around the world.
The Power Of Data To Impact Change
Litterati empowers anyone to identify, map, and collect the world's litter, while also connecting to a broader community of associated brands, cities, schools, and individuals. Litterati believes there is great power in data and leveraging that data to understand not only the source but the solution to one of humanity’s biggest issues. “Every city in the world has unique litter fingerprint and that fingerprint provides both the source of the problem and the path to the solution.” said Kirschner.
The information that Litterati is collecting can help local governments understand gaps in their infrastructure such as not enough garbage cans in a particular neighborhood that is overrun with trash or encouraging companies to redesign their brand packaging, as well as impacting behavioral change at both the corporate and individual level.
Litterati’s community is especially strong in the Netherlands, and one Dutch Litterati power user, named Dirk Groot noticed an excess of cough drop wrappers from the Dutch brand Antaflu. He organized a cleanup and presented the data and garbage to the company’s CEO, who is now working to change the wrappers from plastic to paper.
Another cleanup organized by school kids near their school found the majority of the 1,240 pieces of litter happened to be plastic straw wrappers. The kids themselves organized to ban straws from their school lunches.
In a particularly blighted area of Oakland, California - Litterati mapping and image recognition found the biggest percentage of trash in that area to come from a nearby fast-food restaurant with the biggest trash culprits, an abundance of its unopened hot sauces. That data presented to the company could result in the restaurant only dispensing hot sauce upon request.
Armed with the data and determination, we have the power to impact change.
The Role Of Machine Learning
With its grant from the National Science Foundation, Litterati aims to make major improvements to its AI and image recognition technology. This is especially important when it comes to compromised images of litter which can be in various states of decay. Increasing the percentage of correct identification is one of the key areas of improvements planned for the Litterati app.
The funds will go towards building out Litterati’s taxonomy which currently applies a COMB framework - Category = soda / Object = can / Material = aluminum / Brand = Coke. This system is the foundation for a smarter tagging system, where machine learning is applied to the images, presenting a list of tags with increasing precision. By building a more granular database, Litterati can derive more specific insights about the types of litter seen in various communities.
The company plans to also employ a hierarchy of models rather than just one algorithm for classification. For example, one model may just focus on brands, while another will look at materials - the idea is to use this hierarchy of models to improve accuracy in identifying items in a state of decay. The machine learning will determine the best sequential classification to apply based on the picture and historical database information.
Litterati will also be enhancing its machine learning with a suite of citizen science tools which will act much like captcha image recognition to improve and confirm item identification and work in tandem with its machine learning algorithms.
Lastly, Litterati intends to continue to expand its municipal litter fingerprints to identify other types of data that could be helpful, such as topography, population density, and socioeconomics. Painting a picture of trash and where it ends up can help to eradicate it at the source.
The Story Of Litter
Litterati’s citizen trash collectors have now picked up almost 3 million pieces of trash, preventing those pieces from getting eaten by
birds, polluting our waterways or making their way into our oceans. The app has gained momentum among users in the Netherlands who collectively have picked up over 1 million pieces of trash, with the US a close second in activity. Litterati’s data also confirms plastic as the most pervasive piece of trash. closing in on almost 1 million pieces of plastic trash collected with cigarettes coming in 2nd.
Some of Litterati’s power users routinely pick up one thousand pieces a day, others apply meticulous tagging to their work, while others have even built consulting practices using the data to encourage good corporate citizenship through sustainability and innovation teams inside of larger enterprises.
Litterati's photographic approach to documenting litter makes it both artistic and accessible while also arming people with proof of the positive impact they are having on the planet. Others see this and start participating, and all of a sudden you have a global movement.
The key to the story - You can’t change what you don’t measure.
A Future Free of Litter
While it may feel farfetched to imagine a world free of litter, we can all start contributing to the solution, one piece at a time. Litterati encourages behavioral change through positive reinforcement and in the future possibly will include gamification and incentivization using rewards.
Currently, Litterati monetizes its data by selling it to corporations and governments, such as the city of San Francisco which used its data to validate a forty cent increase to its cigarette tax as a result of mapping cigarette trash around the city and tracking clean up time and location information.
Litterati aims not to make brands the villains, but rather to encourage partnerships that bring them in as part of the solution and to date, several companies have stepped in to “walk the walk” such as Levi’s which recently launched a campaign with its Dockers brand to create a corporate engagement challenge with its employees. Deutsche Telecom is featuring Litterati in a global ad campaign designed to show how technology can be used for good. And Lipton has selected Litterati to pioneer its message around sustainability and plastic pollution.
What started out for Kirschner as a personal mission driven by his kids, is now a global movement dedicated to leaving the world a better place than how we found it. As Kirschner's states
Individually you can make a difference but together we can make an impact. Technology is the connective tissue and unifying umbrella that can transform our feeling of being overwhelmed to one of inspiration and connection with others around the globe.”
Litterati
The Litterati app is available on both Google Play and the App Store. Get out there and start making a difference one piece of litter at a time.
