Emrals

Almost every one of New York City’s 10 million plus residents and commuters have a smartphone with a camera and internet connection. It is already a habit to have your phone snapping pics of everything, so why not trash, too? Emrals gives you a platform to report the trash you pass everyday whether it is cigaret butts, plastic bottles, pizza boxes, shoes, broken (or working) furniture, dog waste bags, broken umbrellas, old cds, doggie booties, diapers, bottle caps, derelict bikes, dirty leaves blocking catch basins, or an unidentifiable mash of waste, we want you to post on emrals. Not everyone wants to stop and clean it up. And yet, we all want a cleaner city, now.

So how can taking a picture of trash help? Well, what if you add a little monetary incentive for someone to clean it up? People have been collecting cans and bottles for a cash reward for decades. Let’s make it worth it and have more cash rewards for picking up waste and recycling it. Emrals can tell them where theses rewards are. Users can add emrals to the picture, we call “dirt alert” that acts as a reward for a person who can then come and clean it up and upload the clean pic solution. The solution will then be verified by the community and the reward will be released to the person who cleaned it up.

What if I don’t like taking pictures of trash but I still want to clean up the city? Users on emrals can create an Impact Zone where their money will be spread out over the dirt alerts in that area. Quality of life issue needs constant care while we rebuild the system of solid waste management and improve our recycling systems. Many people cannot choose to increase a municipal action of funds to keep better care of our streets. We can most of us, contribute a little each month to make a difference in the places that matter most to us. Some parks have much less litter than others. A walk through certain areas of Central Park, even with so many visitors, the grass is greener on that side. There are recycle barrels and constant workers. How is it managed? Private money. So let’s bring that private money everywhere to every neighborhood all over the globe. Fund an Impact Zone. Fund a cleaner environment.

What makes the eCan special? To start, in the culture of a gamified world, we have the ecan playing a rewarding thank you every time you throw away an item. In a world of interactive and connected devices, we have the ecan equipped with a touchscreen for visualizing data and connecting to other part of the emrals system, like listing dirt alerts and educating users about recycling. The ecan also keeps track of the items you toss and can identify them with a barcode reader and camera. You can then see the data for the trash that is thrown away like how many daily uses and what kind of product packaging is being tossed.

Our next version currently under development, is an auto-sorting device that would use machine learning to identify items and direct them into the correct holding chamber to help achieve maximum recycling. Recycling includes reusing our food waste as it naturally transforms it useful materials like compost and biogas and biofuel. The ecan can help capture these materials and separate them for optimal reuse which will save not just the planet, but also municipal resources and working capital.