Bringing Bins to Life

Litter is a persistent challenge in Hamilton that has direct and indirect negative effects on the well-being of the City and its residents.

Project Description:

The issue surrounding the litter problem is societal, long-standing, ongoing and difficult to combat. Litter is often recognized as an aesthetic issue and it is, but its impacts are more than visual – litter negatively affects the environment, people’s health, and the local economy, and has numerous ripple effects within each. The City has initiated several interventions to reduce littering behaviours as part of its ‘City-Wide Litter Strategy’. As part of those endeavors, the proposed CityLAB project and recommended deliverable, would be invaluable to test, track and/or measure the following: 1) prompt or que a response in preventing littering behaviours; and 2) reward or recognize ideal litter management behaviours. 

In Scope:

It is anticipated that the students will work on the Software components – User Interface and Database for storing the data for the project

Intended Outcomes:

The intended outcome of this project will be used by City Staff to test the effectiveness of interventions on littering rates using field experiments and quasi-experimental methods.

City staff name: Joel McCormick Manager, Waste Collections

Additional staff name: Diane Butterworth Acting Project Manager, Waste Collections

Instructor name: Mark Yendt Software Engineering Project