Trashbot wins Rep. Young Kim’s 2023 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 40th District

When asked what inspired the creation of Trashbot, the student said, “The government and environmental groups are telling citizens to recycle on a daily basis, but the main reason why people fail to recycle is because they don’t have the time to make the decision of whether or not the trash is recyclable and that they don’t know what could be recycled and what couldn’t. I first noticed this issue at school during lunch. As people do a great job throwing away their trash, because they are rushing to get to their next class or that they don’t know how to recycle, they don’t always throw their trash into the correct bin. The items that aren’t properly recycled goes into landfill, and 80 percent of the trash in landfill are actually recyclable. As a large portion of trash that’s recyclable is going into landfill, it’s contaminating the environment, killing other living organisms, destroying natural habitats for other organisms, and things such as micro plastic will come back eventually to harm humans health. 

This issue is important because this is not only harming the environment and other animals, but humans are also facing the consequences. As the large plastics that people toss into the environment turn into smaller microplastics due to erosion, it either goes directly into our body by breathing them, or they go into the animals that we eat, and then we swallow microplastic with our food. Although the tiny pieces of plastic can’t kill us directly, the toxic chemicals and the possibility of it clogging up blood vessels is devastating. 

Although many people are aware of the issue and are trying to recycle, determining what could be recycled and what can’t can be tricky. Just for plastic, there are recyclable plastic and non-recyclable plastic and people need to carefully read the packaging to determine. Therefore, the issue that this project is trying to solve is not only trying to recycle trash, but also using technology such as a robotic arm, and computer vision to assist people with the process of recycling.”