Clean Coastal Virginia wins Rep. Elaine Luria’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Virginia’s Second District

When asked what inspired the creation of Clean Coastal Virginia, the student said, “During the COVID-19 lockdown, I was staying at home most of the time and I started to walk around my home for physical exercise. I noticed the amount of litter in my neighborhood. At that time, I wondered how I can use technology to help motivate people to keep the environment clean. I looked around for such a solution that was convenient and efficient but could not find one. This inspired me to think of a new mission: Clean Coastal Virginia, and a new app – Clean Coastal Virginia that can work with a Smart Litter Grabber. With that in my mind, I founded Clean Coastal Virginia at www.cleancoastalvirginia.com

My new app, Clean Coastal Virginia, uses a phone’s camera to take a picture of a discarded coffee cup, a plastic bottle, candy wrapper, or any other piece of litter. Next, the app automatically geo-tags the picture, and its machine learning tool recommends tags for the kind of litter. One can also share a post in their social media apps of their choice where they can invite or challenge their friends to help keep their street, neighborhood, school grounds, or city clean. I wanted this feature to keep people motivated. The major use of this app is for the city administrators, who can get data analytics reports that show entire data and suggestions of the locations that would be optimal for recycling, garbage, and trash cans on the streets.

Since ease of use and convenience are the major drivers in the Clean Coastal Virginia app, I was particularly motivated to provide a positive User Experience (UX) and an intuitive User Interface (IU). The UX is a critical piece of the Clean Coastal Virginia app because it provides the users a smooth journey that will be most conducive to the success of the app. The UI is user-friendly, intuitive, easy to understand, responsive, and aesthetically appealing.”