New AI app to help map out litter in Amsterdam
After years of picking up and cataloguing litter, former IT worker Dirk Groot and volunteers from a tech company, Capgemini, have developed a new app to help map out the litter in Amsterdam and where it comes from, Parool reports.
With the app, Litterlens, locals can take a photo of the litter they encounter and, using AI, the app will identify the material the packaging is made of, what it contained, and even the brand that produced it, from Coca-Cola to Heineken.
Capgemini developed the app and tested it out with Groot as he collected trash in the aftermath of SAIL Amsterdam. The app will be further tested at Amsterdam CleansDay, a large-scale cleanup operation planned by locals for September 19.
The goal is to collect data and identify the source of the litter, so that polluters can be addressed. For example, beer bottles and plastic cups from recent events, of soft drink bottles imported by tourist shops that don’t have a deposit on them.
The data from the app can be used by the local government to make a case. ”This gives them a tool to substantiate their claim with data,” Luc Baardman of Capgemini told Parool. His colleague, Marijn Markus, added: “Otherwise, it’s just a civil servant’s gut feeling.”
Litter collector Groot has high hopes for the data collected by the app. For example, the municipality can take data showing a large amount of McDonald’s takeaway packaging in litter in a parking lot to the fast food chain to discuss measures. Groot’s hometown, Purmerend, has already halved its litter using this method, he told Parool. “Ideally, we’d have companies pay prorata.” You require good data to make the polluter pay, he said.
