How This Open Litter Database Will Save the Planet

Written by Litterati | Published 2020/08/20
Tech Story Tags: future | technology | environment | environment-conservation | open-data | datasets | machine-learning | artificial-intelligence

TLDR The Litterati app has been around for a couple years on iOS + Android. Over 100k people have downloaded the app and been a part of a global team that is 'crowdsource cleaning the Earth' With open data, it means that every piece picked up through the app becomes a "soldier for good" available to anyone on Earth. As the models improve, the data becomes cleaner & more powerful. I'm excited for the future & would love to hear your thoughts, questions, or comments if you want to share.via the TL;DR App

The Litterati app has been around for a couple years on iOS + Android. Over that time, well over 100k people have downloaded the app and been a part of a global team that is 'crowdsource cleaning the Earth'.

Over that time, people only had access to the data that they themselves generated.
And some amazing individuals, classrooms, organizations, and companies have used their data to create lasting positive environmental change.

The fact that these things have happened with "limited" access to the total dataset, I'm excited to see what people are able to do now that they have open access to everything.
With open data, it means that every piece picked up through the Litterati app becomes a "soldier for good" available to anyone on Earth.
My hope is to see an acceleration in the number of powerful, lasting, systemic changes that happen as a result of good people leveraging this data.
There is an ever growing number of people gathering & utilizing this data to hold to account those who are harming the planet.

If you want to download data from Litterati's Open Global Litter Database, click here.

Final Thoughts

Litterati is actively working to train Machine Learning models to recognize more and more of the most common littered objects, materials, and brands.
As the models improve, the data becomes cleaner & more powerful. I'm excited for the future & would love to hear your thoughts, questions, or comments if you would like to share.

Written by Litterati | Head of Product & Growth @ Litterati. On a mission to help the environment through technology & data
Published by HackerNoon on 2020/08/20