Project H.O.P.E. – Helping the Oceans, Preserving the Environment wins Rep. Chris Jacobs’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in New York’s 27th District

When asked what inspired the creation of Project H.O.P.E. – Helping the Oceans, Preserving the Environment, the student said, ”The story in my video demonstration is based on my real life experiences: I recently went to the shore, and I was surprised to see so many plastic bottles lying on the beach. I wondered why people did not just pick up their waste and keep the beach clean. There were several easily accessible garbage cans, which were pretty close nearby, so the problem was not that people could not pick up the trash. It was their choice just to leave the beach dirty. I picked up some bottles to help clean up, but I realized if everyone just picked up a few bottles, the beach would soon be clean. We need to associate picking up litter with a positive, fun, experience. I wondered if a computer game which modeled positive behavior might encourage people to adopt that behavior in the real world. If people associate picking up bottles on the beach with the excitement and energy of a competitive computer game, would they turn picking up bottles on the beach into a real life game?

I did not want to create a game that was clearly an “educational” game, and I did not want the game to be a text based game which was full of statistics about ocean pollution, and just shouted at everyone to pick up trash. I wanted to create a fun way to get people to repeatedly pick up trash so that it would become a habit. I shared it with my family, but they are already good about picking up all their trash at the beach, so I could not tell if it had any effect on them. Next, I would like to share it with people who litter, to see if it has any effect on their behavior. Picking up plastic from the beach is a small action which can have significant consequences. If everyone just picked up a bottle or two this would have a major impact on the beach and ocean environment.”