I plan to develop an app that allows businesses to post their by-products, so that other businesses, individuals or groups may acquire and use them. Tentatively titled, Givvr. Initially I will focus on one area to prototype and get user testing from - a Chaff Map. This will be a website containing a map to finding chaff produced by coffee roasters, and the site will contain informational insight into growing mushrooms from the chaff, using chaff in compost, nutritional values of things grown from chaff, and it will highlight some projects so visitors can see some nice results and be inspired.
Using insights from this first stage, I will then develop the full-feature universally usable platform. The purpose is to keep the heavy stream of waste produced by business from going to landfills. The effect of this make → waste pipeline is being felt already in the form of glacier melt, insect disappearance, coral bleaching and more. We are taking pot shots at the web of life, and it is harming our livelihoods. As one who actually enjoys being outside, this is an issue near to my heart. And as a maker, I would like to get more items for less money.
Similar projects include craigslist free and freecycle, which are great, but by themselves put the burden of this work on individuals, when I believe the pressure needs to be on businesses. Of course I am influenced by the incredible work of various organizations, my own prior company Greater Good / Charity USA, the Sierra Club, Keep American Beautiful, the philosophy of upcycling, and more - yet these groups more often solve problems that we can see, rather than help uproot problems we can’t. There is a really cool company called Terra Cycle, with offices in New Jersey, which has a similar function to my goal - but I believe we would work better in tandem than in direct collaboration or cooperation. I plan to meet with them. Terra Cycle delivers Terra boxes to places that are of a single product type. They then pick up the boxes and convert the items to new products. The items can be of any kind - cigarette butts, tech waste, compost - Terra Cycle has a solution. This is exactly the philosophy I believe in, as trained microbiologist I am also aware of the patterns and systems in nature that convert one substance to another. It happens within our cells all day every day. And at its simplest, the process is simply break apart, put back together, often not the whole way - as is the case with meat eating. Basically nature converts matter, it does not waste it. So in my mind we need to become better converters, wasting only that which benefits our environment.
The reason I feel the need to build this type of solution is because none of the above groups accomplish what I intend to do - create a centralized database of consistently produced by-products of business. I can go through each individually. Amazon is a marketplace, like my app, but the vast majority of items must be purchased, unlike my app, where every item will be free. Craigslist is a marketplace, and an upcycling community, but is focused on individual donations to drive its economy, unlike my app, which focuses on the waste stream generated by business that is largely unseen. World clean up day made an app for mapping trash, but again it depends on the contributions of individuals to make it work, mine depends and is focused on businesses. Yelp contains search and find functionality like I want my app to have, but it is mostly for people to find food or services, or a place to find lots of products, unlike my app which is a place to find a single product somewhere in the city. The communities/philosophies of the various up/freecycle movements, and charitable groups are great, but they do not execute the technical implementation that yields a tool like I intend to do, rather they leverage communities and systems to alleviate the symptoms of this negative cycle, while persistently pursuing political progress - something I do intend to do. And they also mostly depend on individuals to drive their work. Of course I will depend on individuals as well, but at the consumer end rather than the responsible originator end. For too businesses get off scot-free for their waste. Once I develop this tool, gather users, and build a community, I can show this system to policy makers, so that they incentivize its use. If it then becomes cheaper for businesses to share than to waste, then we may find ourselves in a much better, much cleaner world. But before that happens, there needs to be a tool out there that is easy for businesses to use, and right now, the best product for businesses to manage their waste is the cities’ garbage trucks. A wholly simplistic and short-sighted solution that in my mind requires a radical solution, a tangible solution, a technical solution.
I am quite confident in my Javascript, HTML, and CSS, enough to build my prototype starting today. This semester I have some classes regarding databasing, which will provide the ability required to develop a full-fledged app. The initial prototype will be a static site, with a simple usable map and some links to content. This I will play test for my midterm. From those insights I will better understand how to implement a dynamic site - what content is desired, what functionality is required, and what is not. The full site draws direct inspiration from a number of sites - amazon, yelp, mcmaster carr, open table, thingiverse, wikipedia - and will mostly be a process of mixing and matching the proper functionality from each, combining it into a new app which does not yet exist. I already have paper sketches for the full app, and during the Chaff Map prototyping phase I will also get insights using paper prototypes of the full Givvr platform.