TrashHunter App

A piece of paper on the side of the road, a plastic bottle in the bushes, or an illegally dumped trash bag—litter isn’t just unsightly; it also harms the environment and the cityscape. With the TrashHunter app, there’s now a digital solution to highlight such litter and motivate people to take action together.

The idea behind TrashHunter is simple: Anyone who spots litter while out and about can take a photo of it with their smartphone and report it via the app. Built-in artificial intelligence helps classify the item into a specific waste category. The reported findings are displayed on an interactive map. Step by step, this creates a digital picture of where and in what form litter accumulates in public spaces.

In addition to simply reporting litter, TrashHunter deliberately focuses on participation. Users can remove litter themselves, organize cleanup events, or join existing cleanups. Points, levels, and a leaderboard are designed to provide an additional incentive. This way, an everyday walk can turn into a small environmental action.

Kommunalservice Jena (KSJ) is also on board as a partner. KSJ primarily contributes its experience from daily work with waste management and city cleaning. This technical expertise is particularly valuable for the app’s further development. An important part of the collaboration is improving the automatic recognition of different waste categories. As a municipal waste expert, the KSJ can help support the AI with practical information and make waste classification even more precise in the future. The goal is to combine digital possibilities with knowledge gained from daily practice.

For the KSJ, this collaboration is more than just a technical project. Digital tools can help consolidate and visualize information about litter hotspots. TrashHunter, for example, identifies so-called litter hotspots and enables the analysis of data on where litter is found. In the long term, this can also provide insights into where litter occurs particularly frequently and where cleanup campaigns can be most effectively targeted.

However, there is one thing an app cannot replace: people who take responsibility and actually roll up their sleeves to get the job done. As a municipal service provider, the KSJ is responsible, among other things, for waste disposal and street cleaning in Jena. TrashHunter can complement this work by involving citizens more closely and making litter findings visible right where they occur. In this way, the partnership pursues a simple idea: A clean Jena is a shared responsibility.