Mapping litter with your help

With 3,600 users from 80 countries and more than 100,000 images of litter, one Cork-made app is sending out a powerful story about waste in communities across the globe.

Founded by Seán Lynch from Togher, the idea for the OpenLitterMap app came to him in 2008 when he was studying geography in UCC and was introduced to Geographic Information Systems which captures and analyses data on many different kinds of maps. He said he noticed a lot of litter on his way to and from college and said to himself: “Wouldn’t it be great it I could put this on a map and educate society and try to use the data to fix the problem of littering?”

Fast forward to 2017, Seán launched OpenLitterMap as a web app and then on iOS and Android last year.

Seán explained to the Cork Independent how his app works: “Turn on your location services and take a photo of litter you come across. When your location services are on, your GPS is embedded in the photo so when the photo is uploaded to OpenLitterMap, we extract those coordinates and use that to make maps. These maps tell very powerful stories about waste in people’s local communities.”

Seán recently launched a GoFundMe page to help him bring the app to the next stage of where he wants it to be adding that he’s the only person working on the app which is self-financed.

Inspired by OpenStreetMap, all of the data is open and accessible so anyone can download it. It gives polluting industries, NGOs, local authorities and many others data on where litter and waste is for free.

Seán added that collecting the data is easy given that everyone knows what litter is from cigarette butts to dog poop and that litter is everywhere.

He also said that in the past few months since Covid-19 measures were introduced, more and more facemasks and PPE are being dumped all over the world.

For more information, visit openlittermap.com or donate at gofundme.com/f/openlittermap.