I worked for a small environmentally friendly startup in Slovakia, before I came to Kozminski University. I am talking about www.trashout.me. In this post I want to explain how that works and how you can have an impact to keep your environment clean.
Imagine the following situation: You are with your boy- / girlfriend on a romantic walk through the forest. Everything is nice and than this:
Trash in nature is not only crazy ugly and ruins the mood for your romantic walk, but it is also a serious problem for animals and plants. But at least you can do something about it. You can help TrashOut to tackle that problem. After downloading you can just follow three simple steps:
HOW TO:
And now what?
All collected data ends up on www.trashout.me . This is already a great step as you can see if you take a look on the TrashMap. The TrashOut TrashMap is probably one of the most powerful tools to lobby for change. Everybody is aware that there is a problem with wild dumps, but nobody ever tracked how big this problem actually is. Just by reporting illegal dumbs, you already help to make a big step into the right direction.
But you can do more!
Speak with public administrations
One thing you can do is to speak with your local administration. Most towns and cities have dedicated people who are responsible for a clean environment. They can use TrashOut as well and send their employees to freshly reported trash. They can even get in touch with TrashOut and get the reports sent straight into their inbox.
Keep track
The TrashMap is extremely valuable. But it gets even more valuable if it is always up to date. The next time you want to get out into nature, check with the app, where the closest reports are. Have a look and update the report. It is important to keep track of the trash, but it is just as important to keep track where someone already cleaned it. When you update an illegal dump after it got cleaned, the marker in the TrashMap turns from red to green. Wouldn’t it be beautiful if all marker in your region were green?
Organise cleaning events
Are you a member of the scouts or part of a sports club? Get people involved and organise a cleaning event. Let’s Do It Estonia organised 2008 a cleaning event where they managed to motivate 50 000 people to clean their country. And I mean – clean their country -. Within one day whole Estonia got cleaned from illegal trash. You don’t have to aim that high, but maybe your neighbourhood needs a little clean up before spring? Get people involved and just do it.
Download TrashOut now for : iPhone, Android or WindowsPhone
Original Post Written by Marcus Huelsdau on April 21,2015
Really innovative… What a great way to keep our surroundings clean :)
If you want to work for the guys who created TrashOut, check out this hilarious job add: https://inhiro.com/job/id/3664