Stop Literally Living in Litter
Litterati: The Trashy Movement
In 2008, Pixar introduced the world to Wall-E, the adorable trash collecting robot. The film was just one of the media outlets that drew the public's’ attention to the consequences of not taking care of the planet and allowing trash to accumulate. The film depicted a horrifying prediction of what the future would look like, with mountains of trash looming far into to the distance.
However, that depiction is not our future. That is what the world already looks like today.
Everywhere we walk, trash litters the corners of our peripheral vision. It’s on sidewalks, crinkled in gutters, tangled in wired fences. It has become such a pervasive element of our daily lives, that we have stopped noticing it, as if we were wearing futuristic glasses that automatically erase anything that is unpleasant to look at.
“The size of the problem; it's massive. From the top of Mt. Everest to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, you'll find litter just about everywhere you look,” states Jeff Kirschner, founder and creator of Litterati.
Our eyes glance over rusting cans of red bull on the beach, and within the following 20 to 30 seconds, our brain decides this information isn’t relevant and discards it without leaving any trace of it in our memory. How is anything supposed to change if we don’t even remember there is a problem?
Litterati is an organization that is reopening the publics’ eyes to litter in a useful, informative, and interactive way. Built on top of Instagram, users take photos of pieces of litter they see in their daily lives, hashtag Litterati, and then appropriately discard the item. The photographs are not only an artistic reminder to the public about litter, but are a measurable and tangible evidence of the impact each individual can have by just picking up one piece of trash a day.
“I don’t know of any other way to tackle a big problem, other than just breaking it down into bits and taking it one piece at a time,” explains Kirschner.
With each piece of trash picked up and photographed, a plethora of useful information is gathered. Each image provides data about trash location, the time period in which it was picked up, the type of trash it is, and if it is from a particular brand. With this, waste is transformed into data that can enable people to manage the amounts of litter. Cities can even build their own litter profiles to see which particular parts of the city have a greater issue with litter. The applications of this kind of information are countless! For example, a city can find solutions for areas that generate a large amount of litter by simply acquiring a few well-placed trash and recycling bins on a particular street corner. San Francisco and San Jose have already started to get involved with Litterati to look into ways to improve their cities elimination of litter. Below is just a fraction of how much litter has already been documented in downtown San Francisco.
The information provided by Litterati will be the tools used to find the solutions to clean the earth not just by individual efforts, but with organized and collaborated work. And it’s not a problem that will be solved overnight. Cleaning the earth and eliminating litter will take generations and requires a commitment to be active.
“If Litterati is to truly create transformative change and have a global impact, we hope it's with our children, teaching them how to be effective stewards of our planet”, remarks Kirschner.
As Kirschner hoped, today’s younger generation is already actively involved. Multiple schools around the country, including Modesto’s very own Fremont Open Plan Elementary School, have opened their doors to Litterati. The students at Modesto used the application, and over just a few months, found that the most common piece of litter in their school came from individual straw packaging. They brought this information to the attention to the school board, and successfully convinced them to install a straw dispensary to prevent littering.
It seems fitting that this movement that Kirschner hopes will most motivate today's’ youth, was originally inspired by his very own daughter. While hiking in the Oakland hills, the four-year-old girl pointed to a plastic tub of cat litter that someone had tossed into the creek. “Daddy, that doesn’t go there,” she said. That, according to Kirschner, was “the eye-opening moment which became the inspiration for Litterati”.
Litterati has already made great strides in the community. In addition to collaborating with numerous environmental organizations such as NOAA, Monterey Bay Aquarium, and Keep America Beautiful, Litterati has had particularly beautiful photographs displayed in multiple art exhibits around the bay area. Recently, Litterati was the winner of July’s Startup House Battlefield, where Kirschner’s story and ideas amazed all five of the experienced judges.
Litterati isn’t just a cool photo app, it’s a movement. After taking a few pictures of litter, suddenly a lot more pieces of trash come into focus. What your brain used to discard within 30 seconds, is now registered as an opportunity; not to just take a photo, but to make a difference. With each photo, Litterati is transforming the waste around us into data to induce new methods of trash and litter management and enacting responsible policies. Through these channels, individual and organized efforts alike, Litterati is going to clean the world; one piece at a time.
