Earth Care
As a community we can be the change we need and want to see.
In January 2024, the State of California passed CA SB 1383, a bill that mandates that consumers keep food waste out of the black bin to reduce our output of Short Lived Climate Pollutants created from contaminated decaying trash.
The Goals of Earth Care are:
- To Teach and remind residents to be mindful about their waste and how much of it they product
- Provide a fun way to track habits to make healthier lifestyle changes for waste production
- Show residents that its easy to care, and be mindful about our waste production.
What's the Problem?
Problem Statement
How might we develop a tool that supports Residents who feel they have not been informed of these regulations, feel they need better exposure from trash companies and community leaders on how their waste is processed, to make the proper adjustments to their life style to properly follow the new laws.
Who's our Target Audience
From my user interviews, I concluded these three personas. through my initial research I also found that these personas often cross the lines of the other user types.
The Informed Recycler
Who is always seeking out the proper bin for trash disposal and picking up trash they find on the ground wile out and about.
Eco Minded Shopper
Who cares about where their products are sourced from and would go out of their way to purchase a more sustainable product. but feels they have been duped by products claiming to be eco friendly.
Eco Conscious Neighbor
Who is aware they need to recycle and most likely does lightly sort their trash. They don't currently compost but hope to figure how to manage their food waste.
Key Insights From User Interviews:
Group One
Many feel they don't have the proper awareness from the state or local community leaders about organics disposal or sustainability.
Consumers would try composing, but feel its “hard, confusing, afraid of killing worms, or don't have time”
The Consumer Journey
This info graphic is meant to illustrate what process consumers currently go through to discard of Organics waste and how they feel each step of the way.
Overall, Consumers feel frustrated with the information that they have been given and feel that there are mixed signals on how to dispose of organics waste.
~ Photo By Aimee Reeff
Growing the Vision
In order to help Californians make these sustainable lifestyle adjustments, they need a reliable resource that they can reference periodically that can also help them find facilities who can collect their trash or identify places they can drop it off.
Surveying the Market
When looking for how this toll would fit into the market. our desired goals were assed and compared to how they are closet achieved currently in the market.
Proposed app goals:
- an inviting theme but not confusing or annoying (in color font and shapes)
- to be informative and have an intellectual, professional tone(trustworthy and reliable)
- to have a disclosure of information, but not too hidden by layers or assumptions (in buttons/phrasing)
- transparency of the recycling process from curb to Material Recycling Facility (MRF)
-accessibility to various facilities to process trash, redeem recyclables, process organics and dispose of e-waste
- Provide better habits for practicing sustainability in consumers everyday lives, and for business alike
- Utilize a scan feature to help identify compost compatibility for every day products
Market Matrix
Recycle Coach
Scrap Zero
Recycle Smart
an app that helps users track when their trash and recycling pick up is and guides them on how to properly dispose of common household items.
an app that allows users to scan products and understand if they are recyclable and how to dispose of the item properly. This app also gives users personalized data based upon their scans. The aim is to help educate and info users about what parts of their products are recyclable.
An app that is meant to help local Australian customers have more control over how often their recycling and trash is collected. This company aims to provide peace-of-mind to its constituents by letting them automate their pick ups with their local facilities.
Key Matrix Findings
The current competition has similar function and mission.
A Scan Feature is available in limited forms- few elements that provided some variance of the scanning feature and the ways in which each app delivered the pertinent information (layout and volume of info).
There is only one app on the market that allows users to scan an object to learn about what the product is and how to properly dispose of the object locally.
The apps that are specifically aimed at its local constituents provided better information about how to dispose of items realistically, rather than a generic response - looking for specifics on plastic type and hazardous waste.
1
Accessibility
There is a need to provide a tool that allows users to scan a product to gain recycling info and material composition, then guide people to local Processing centers or literature.
2
Education
There is a need to provide Californians with reliable info about recycling organics and e-waste disposal.
3
Exposure
There is a need to provide a way for users to appreciate how their purchases have an impact on the earth, will encourage users to care about the issue.
The Government
The Municipalities
and Us
From the Market research and Interviews, many felt ill informed by their community leaders and their local municipalities who process our waste.
Interviewees advocated for a sponsored, reliable resources that can educate people about the impacts to their communities
These resources do provide FAQs, and examples and articles about composting and how they can easily comply with the law-- but they leave it up to the consumer to facilitate their engagement and success with the new protocols.
The Current apps on the market provide education on recycling in general and offer support and advice on how and users can dispose of their waste properly. But none are focused on addressing any mandatory laws and regulations .
Where these apps provide an educational resource for users- none specifically address organics and other types of alternative waste disposal.
Earth Care Wants to Help
Earth Care has 6 Goals to help the Consumer:
1. Provide a digital resource that is informative, engaging and accessible for any user with access to a smartphone or computer while also Providing progress data about carbon consumption by Consumers (business and single-residents alike).
2. Provide awareness of community. Mandates and regulations that require community engagement in order to be successful. I.e. SB1383, SB 1046.
Provide awareness about greenwashing and how that negatively impacts consumers.
3. Provide a way for residents to find proper collection centers for various types of waste while also providing a crash course on composting.
4. Allow users to scan a product to find manufacturer/distributor/emissions information.
5. Provide access to community resources that encourage sustainable lifestyle practices.
6. To keep the app accessible for Consumers by being free and able to be used as a reference offline (using cached data).
Goals For Stakeholders
To help consumers produce cleaner trash that can be collected by Local Material Reclamation Facilities
To help Keep services affordable for local consumers by supporting the app to educate their constituents.
To help provide accessibility to better sustainable living practices.
Why Should they Care?
Avoid Fines for themselves and their consumers.
Save money for avoiding fines and producing cleaner product.
Contribute to the reduction of harmful SCLP emissions.
Companies are legally and financially obligated to comply with SB1383.
How is Success for the Stakeholder Determined?
Community engagement with the app and with their trash.
Using the app to find local facilities to dispose of waste.
Consumers disposing or composting waste instead of burning waste.
Lack of fines from the State and counties.
Eco Brands Featuring their brands in the app.
How is Success for the Consumer Determined?
Community engagement.
Businesses and residents not having their trash rejected or fined.
Making substitutions at the store that better support our environment.
Key Features
Earth Care has 5 main features that can help educate the user in Composting and Sustainable Life Practices.
Home Screen: Display navigation to main features ,display state updates, and accessibility for users to find local resources.
Find my Facility: A tool for residents to find drop off, Pick-up waste facilities and community gardens local to them.
Scan Catalog: A reference to residents to use to reference items the scan can them remember which of their products is compostable.
Eco Scan: A tool to help consumer learn about the compost ability of their favorite products.
Eco Goals: A fun game for users to track their carbon foot print buy scanning the Eco scan to scan their favorite products.
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User Testing: Round Two
Going into user interviews, I wanted to ensure the feasibility of my idea and look for changes in my layout and design to strengthen the friendliness of the presentation of my idea.
Our Interviewees and Their Feedback
Jackie and Brian
Educators
Represent the average consumer
- Brian suggested I add intermediate stages to the Earth Game to help show that you came have both good marks and bad.
- Brian mentioned that he never new what MRFs were until he drove past one in the middle of nowhere-- appreciates the transparency of Facilities and future facility types.
- Jackie would like to see a page on e-waste and battery disposal.
- Jackie and Brian felt that the carousels need arrows or visible swipe gesture to know to interact with the carousels.
Nolan
Manager of Sales and Design at MRF Company
Represents the more seasoned consumer
- Suggested spacing out the progressive disclosure, or even making it optional, as it can be a lot of new information and you do not want to intimidate the user.
- Would like to have options for the gamification - like growing a tree, or cleaning a park of litter. Trash/weeds appear over time and need to be tended. Optional for user, not everyone wants to play.
- Would like to see the scanning feature in action, thinks there is a lot of recycling context that consumers find confusing that this could help clarify.
Mike
CEO of MRF Services Company
Represents outlier in the most informed type of consumer
- Feels that the feasibility of the app is solid and very interested in the scan feature to help consumers. Advised me to get more specific on the differences between commercial and domestic composting .
- “Make a page for industrial vs home composting; home compost cannot reach the required 135°F to properly compost non organic material... it’s best to put these items in the recycling bin and let your MRF sort it out”.
- “Make a page for consumers to ‘follow their trash’, to learn about the different processes with advice on how single family homes deal with waste versus multifamily homes and apartments”.
- MRF stands for Material Reclamation Facility and are not Recovery Facilities-- Recovery Facilities are those that buy the trash from our Trash Collectors.
- Citing the Recycling Partnership website- “a 2022 study found that 65% of what can be recycled actually ends up in the recycling bin.”
- “ There are 4 types of MRFs that process trash from consumers: Dirty MRF(trash collection), Construction and Demolition, Organics and Single/Multi Stream Recycling”
“My key stakeholders would be municipality waste haulers and state and local communities”
Key Findings
More Iconography
The feedback I received from the user interviews was incredibly valuable, and help me to refine my ideas to better support the consumer.
By providing better disclosure of information and more pictural representation of information I can help reduce the mental load of an already dense topic.
How Would This Work?
In my user interviews, I dove deeper down the rabbit hole into API's, Robots and Coding.
Here I explored how to build my tool while also watching my environment impact from using the tool daily.
Creating Transparency
The funding for Eco Scan aims to come from private investors, including MRF companies, MRF servicers, and collaborators. These entities are committed to ensuring their stakeholders and customers are well-informed and confident in the protocols designed to produce cleaner waste.
From user testing learned that there needs to be a better disclosure of information regarding how the scan feature works and what consumers should get our of this experience.
This feature would utilize Image Segmentation, Object Identification and Feature Matching. As well as a delay sequence with the entry scree to the camera feature to add a smoother flow to the experience.
Various API’s that would support Eco Scan:
CloudVision with AutoML powered by Google
This API requires an expensive subscription to use vision detection features, landmark detection and OCR. With the addition of the add on of Auto ML, provides the customization of features to include image segmentation.
Eden AI- api4ai, AWS, Clarifai
A small, company from France that offers $41/month (base level) to develop a model to analyze image and detect various objects within them.
IBM Watson
Providing a collection of AI services including visual recognition
Limitations of Computer Vision
and other API's
- Ensuring data quality
- Processing data quickly
- The effort needed for labeling data
- Scaling
- Addressing privacy and ethical concerns
- Lighting challenges due to the differences between -- human visual perception and camera image processing.
Further Ideation
Through further testing and feedback, it was crucial to introduce some of the features and let the consumer explore at their own pace.
Users also expressed the importance of providing in-depth, easy to read resources about Law, services and Earth friendly life practices.
~ Photos By Aimee Reeff
Food for Thought
Provide a general description of the items below and introduce the services you offer. Click on the text box to edit the content.
Improve Clarity
I want to continue to refine my screens to minimize my text but still find a way to keep users informed .
Improve Accessibility
Find better ways to make the find my facility feature a reliable resource. by improving the search criteria, adding ways to schedule pickups and contact their servicers.
Improve Iconography
Want to work on making my app more user friendly and more engaging with animations and pictures.
With the right tools,
We can make changes
The scan feature should be able to be used on any type of product/object and provide nuanced information about how the product is made and what its made of.
If consumers are giving more informed purchasing power, they might become aware of how easy it is to over consume items that are killing our ecosystems. In turn making more sustainable purchases.
Looking Forward
We benefit from Community Support
For industry support for the access to accurate information and access to reliable resources and coordinating with large entities like Waste Management or Recology.
With support from large companies the funding can be provided to better support residents and and local trash facilitators alike.
~ Photo By Aimee Reeff