MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – MAY 4: Google headquarters in Mountain View, California is seen in this … [+]
Swedish startup Bower has released a Google-backed smartphone app that can identify everyday household items and provide information on how to properly recycle them.
The app is an update to Bower’s existing app, which is already used by 680,000 people worldwide.
However, while the original version identified items by their barcode, the new open source Computer Vision model means that by simply pointing a smartphone camera at an object, the user can instantly identify the type, material, size and best way to dispose of the object. the.
For example, users will be able to point their smartphone cameras at any form of recycling station and bin anywhere in the world and be given real-time guidance on what can be recycled at that location and how best to recycle it.
The app will also calculate the CO2 savings that can be made by recycling the item, and users are also rewarded with money or vouchers once the item is recycled.
The new update is the result of a €1.75 million contribution and free support from a team of Google engineers to Bower for a six-month Google.org fellowship.
And it’s trained using Gemini, a family of multimodal large language models developed by Google’s DeepMind, as well as Bower’s own user data.
In an interview, Bower co-founder and project leader Berfin Mert said the app will now work in 176 countries around the world, adding that it’s a real “game changer” to encourage and incentivize people to dispose properly household items.
“We need to reach out to all those who are not already environmentally friendly and do not have it at the top of their priority lists,” Mert said.
“And we think we can do that through financial rewards and by making the activity of recycling a little more fun.”
He added that the app could also help demystify some of the issues surrounding recycling, particularly as the process itself can vary from location to location.
“The app makes the recycling experience much more enjoyable, with gamified features. We hope it could make scavenger hunts as exciting as Pokemon Go.”
Since the app first launched in 2019, Bower has helped users recycle over 100 million packages.
It also has partnerships with more than 500 global and local brands, such as Nestlé and battery makers VARTA, where they help engage users to increase recycling rates.
Ole Edward Heier, director of product marketing at Google.org, said in an interview that the app should identify items that households throw in the trash on a daily or weekly basis.
He added that this includes products such as plastic trays, aluminum cans and milk cartons. Additional focus has also been placed on potentially problematic waste such as electrical vapours, as these are becoming a growing problem due to the content of lithium batteries that must be disposed of properly.
Heier said the app will also provide country or local area specific advice on how best to recycle each item.
“The app will get better and better as more people use it. We’ve designed the model to continually improve the more it’s used,” he told me.
“Google’s mission is to make the world’s information universally accessible, and what Bower is doing is making recycling information available globally, so there’s a symmetry between what the two companies are doing, and it’s one of the reasons why this collaboration was so successful.”
