Positive Impact in Action… How to Create an Awesome Beach Clean Using Mobile Technology
After months of tech development, the TASK.IO test app was ready for its first field trial… and staying true to our mission of working with positive impact initiatives, this beach clean opportunity was too good to pass up.
The Desaru Coast in eastern Johor, Malaysia is a beautiful stretch of coastline that at first glance might appear to be in good shape. This part of the world is blessed with a tropical climate, sandy shores and constantly warm waters. Visiting the beach is part of the local culture and large family groups can often be seen firing up a barbecue and sharing a relaxing afternoon together. Like any place near human activity however, the message about looking after our environment does not always get through.
As part of the outreach programme at a well known local school, a beach clean-up was arranged and 80 willing volunteers were bused out to Desaru for an afternoon’s litter picking. The promise of lunch and swim at a local hotel afterwards helped with recruitment! Given a 60 minute timeframe and armed with collection sacks, gloves and grab sticks (and much to the bemusement of the locals), our teams set to work.
As the TASK.IO app is not yet available outside of our immediate test group, on this occasion I simply followed the teams around and logged what they picked up. Ultimately, the app will be freely downloadable and each team will be able to log their litter independently.
Having set up the project on TASK.IO beforehand with two simple tasks, it was easy to start collecting the data. My main mission was to log which type of litter was picked up in real time and the app would collect this information and log its geo-location using my iPhone’s built in location system. My only other task was to take some photos within the app as we progressed along the beach. By simply clicking on the appropriate tab for each litter item on my screen and taking some photos, the data was seamlessly collected and stored on the TASK.IO platform, ready for analysis later.
It was clear from the start that once the surface was scratched, the full extent of the problem was clear.
Some of the beach litter, such as fishing nets, had been washed up from afar and may have travelled hundreds of miles before arriving at that place. Most however had simply been carelessly dropped by people directly onto the beach. The trappings of hundreds of previous pic-nics and barbecues were all around. Discarded food cartons, plastic cutlery, straws and toys were abundant in the immediate vicinity. There were also some unexpected finds… including an old television and even a machete! (from a fishing boat most likely).
The main culprits by far, however, were smokers.
Cigarette butts made up over 20% of the items collected — and we had 20 different categories of litter to log! To be honest, each time “cigarette!” was called out by our collectors… they were probably bagging five or more. As an ex-smoker myself, I feel appalled and ashamed at the number of fag-ends that I must have carelessly discarded from my car window, in the streets or in the park. There is simply no excuse.
When you look a little more closely at the damage discarded cigarette butts do, it makes grim reading. An article by verywellmind.com explains the problem very succinctly…
“The core of most cigarette filters, the part that looks like white cotton, is actually a form of plastic called cellulose acetate. By itself, cellulose acetate is very slow to degrade in our environment. Depending on the conditions of the area the cigarette butt is discarded in, it can take 18 months to 10 years for a cigarette filter to decompose. But that isn’t the worst of it. Used cigarette filters are full of toxins, which can leach into the ground and waterways, damaging living organisms that come into contact with them. Most filters are discarded with bits of tobacco still attached to them as well, further polluting our environment with nicotine, which is poisonous.”
Until people realise the damage they are causing by not taking responsibility for their litter, the problem will not go away, which is where education must come in.
Cleaning up the beach is one thing, but without collecting appropriate data and getting the message out there though co-ordinated campaigns, the problem will only persist.
There are numerous beach clean apps (one other was also being used on the day by our teams) — and this all goes towards getting the message out there. With immutable primary data from thousands of beach cleans around the world, a clear picture can be gathered and used to inform us all about the damage being done. Unless you’ve been living under a rock recently, you can’t have failed to have been moved by the ocean litter awareness campaigns. This is all part of the big picture.
So… How did the tech perform?
One thing we were keen to get right from the start was the seamless transition of data from my phone to a suitable place. Each time I punched in the litter log, it needed to be sent directly to a place where the data could later be analysed. This is where Zapier came in. Zapier is the glue that connects more than 1,000 web apps, and ‘Zaps’ are workflows that connect your apps, so they can work together. In our case, we were able to set up a ‘Zap’ to connect the TASK.IO app with a Google sheet. Each time an item of litter was logged on the TASK.IO app, the data was instantly sent to my Google sheet, with our pre-configured information. Each litter item was stamped with the task ID, the geo-location (latitude and longitude) and the user ID (just me this time!)
Once this data was logged, we were then able to analyse it… and in this case, make a pretty donut chart! (See how many cigarettes there were!!) The photos that I took through the app were also stored and easily downloaded later.
Victory Number One For TASK.IO!
In this simple test case we were able to prove for certain that the tech works and that gathering data in the field was simple and effortless.
What’s more, the pupils from were able to use this data to report back to their peers about their day in school assembly.
In just the same way, NGOs will be able to use TASK.IO to report to their backers and funders. This is the beauty of TASK.IO — with a fully customisable platform, any task that you can think of can be completed, logged and reported back.
Get Involved! — Register for the beta programme
Right now, TASK.IO is at an exciting stage of development. Would you like to get involved?
Contact the team or register now for the beta programme and get involved early. Join the beta community and have an influence on how TASK.IO will bring positive impact effects to market.
