RECYCLO: A Waste Management Application 
for MONGO ATLAS HACKATHON

Tags: atlashackathon, mongodb, node, flutter
Published: 2022-01-13 15:14:51



With the advancement of technology, humans have been able to broaden their horizons and create anything they want. But with these useful creations, some unusable byproducts are also generated, which end up being trash/waste. The accumulation of this waste has a very alarming effect on the environment. This was the motivation behind this project.

## **Overview of our submission:** 
Recyclo aims to reduce the total solid waste output of a household by encouraging people to create artwork/projects with unwanted items. One can click a picture/pictures of the items like used pens, ice cream sticks, cardboard, CDs, etc. and recyclo will recommend projects one can make using those items. 

Once a person has completed his project, he/she can post it in the feed. Using recyclo he/she can also sell the making procedure or the item itself. Thereby encouraging people to create artwork/projects and minimise waste.

A user can browse through a collection of different projects on the feed page. He/she can also subscribe to a monthly/yearly plan to know the procedure or can buy the product itself.
For users aiming to work on a specific type of project, he/she can also browse through a selected selection of posts based on ‘tags’ in the explore page.

## **Submission Category:**
This project is being submitted to the E-commerce creation category.

## **Link to the code base:**
 
[This is the app link ](https://github.com/ashmishra1/Recyclo) 
[This is the backend link ](https://github.com/Arya-web/Recyclo-backend)
[The backend is hosted here](https://recyclo.herokuapp.com/)

## **Demo/Additional information:**
 (images with some description)


![this is the image desc](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/oebokompzcojzysb2y27.jpeg) This page enables the user to take a picture and the app automatically lists the items in the image using Machine Learning.

![this is the image desc](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/4zo3krynua2jwn694yhx.jpeg) This page then shows relevant projects that can be made using those items.
![this is the image desc](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/638csx27sqeytdca0vv5.jpeg) This page enables the user to explore different search categories like trending, E-waste, Organic waste etc.

![this is the image desc](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/81u6zh5fwms06dqc22ez.jpeg)This page shows all recent posts. There is also an option where the person can buy the product.

![this is the image desc](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/18tldpkszgi9f7xpq3s5.jpeg)This page allows the user to post his/her project. It also allows the user to allot a price if he/she wants to sell it.

![this is the image desc](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/i76mopb3njbg9ptgpllt.jpeg) This is the account page. All the posts made by this user are visible here. 

## **How we built it:**
So, we had made the frontend using flutter framework and we have embedded object detection algorithm using tensor flow lite in the frontend. And, the signin authentication part is made using Firebase.The backend APIs were made using NODEJS in vs code. Express, mongoose, cors, and express-file-upload are some open-source packages that were used. MongoDB Atlas was used as the database and the backend is hosted using Heroku. 

## **Challenges we ran into:** 
The major challenge we ran into was integrating the backend node rest APIs with the mobile application. The upload part was challenging and took us a lot of time to implement. 

## **Accomplishments:**
Although the challenge to reduce solid waste is immense, we are happy to have created something which can help alleviate this issue. Other than that, we are very proud of all the skills we learned along the way that will surely help us when making an app in the future such as working with MongoDB, Node REST Apis, and Flutter for the front-end design.

## **Team**
Ashutosh Mishra
Arya Shreyas Das