BottleUP

The world is awash in plastic bottle waste. Half a trillion plastic bottles are sold every year around the world and the US alone throws away over 35 billion plastic bottles during this period. Recycling as an inconvenient afterthought needs to change.

BottleUP is a fun, tangible, and action oriented mobile phone game that leverages technology to jump start the plastic bottle recycling process. All you have to do is collect, take a photo, and recycle. The game uses AI to identify and tally your current and total bottle count. People and groups can compete in a productive, friendly fashion, while learning more about environmental issues and our global interconnected community

BottleUP transforms and scales recycling from a lone activity to a fun, global playful one. The game is designed to have a transformational impact on multiple generations and measurably increase global plastic bottle recycling rates.

Plastic bottle consumption continues to rise while gross recycling rates in the US have continued to decrease YOY since 1995, from 39.7% to 29.2% in 2017. BottleUP is working to transform the interaction between people and recycling. While recycling education is prominent at schools and throughout the community, not enough people are actually participating in the process. This attitude towards recycling impacts everyone in the world. The problem might be that people just cease to care about the environment or there is a disconnect between one’s perceived world and the enormous global negative impact of not properly disposing of plastic bottles. Today, 91% of global plastics are not recycled and instead, are substantially going directly into our world’s oceans and landfills. Plastics in our oceans take a toll on wildlife when they ingest plastic instead of food, or get caught up in the pollution. The ingestion of plastics by marine life affects all creatures, from microorganisms to fish, mammals, and the entire food chain. In landfills, plastic bottles take up to a thousand years to decompose and leak chemicals into our environment along the way. The danger is only growing with humans currently purchasing a million plastic bottles a minute.

Increased recycling benefits everyone. The active participants we are focusing on are cell phone users age 9 and up. This initial young target audience is a cohort that is tightly coupled to their smart devices, are well versed in social media, and are the future. Historically, younger generations have been proponents of improving the environment. Recently Nielsen conducted a study showing that 80% of GenZ (15-20) and 85% of Millennials (21-34) felt that it was “extremely” or “very” important that companies implement programs to improve the environment. GenZ and Millennials ranked highest among all age groups surveyed. To reach that target audience we will use word of mouth and social media as a way for people to discover the game. Users will be able to easily share game play results, see their environmental contribution statistics, and connect game status to post to their favorite social networks. We are focusing on letting users share positive, educational, and inspirational messages to their broader community through the game. The ability for each user to share the positive impact they are having on the environment by playing the game is an integral part of the continued growth of BottleUP.

BottleUP is a tangible and action oriented mobile phone game that leverages technology to jump start the plastic bottle recycling process. We are turning an activity which has traditionally been an afterthought into a fun, educational, and social experience by applying game design elements to the current process or gamifying it. The core design principles we are designing around include wide audience access, inclusive technology, ease of use, use of social media, statistical feedback, and scalable play.

Users compete at collecting plastic bottles (PET and HDPE) to be sent for recycling. They start by opening up the mobile game and scan the total number of bottles that they have collected via their phone camera. The scanning, identifying, and counting of plastic bottles is processed by proprietary computer vision system BottleEYE. After submitting the count, users will get feedback on the positive environmental impact they are making through the current play and historical participation. The count is also recorded in a global leaderboard where users can view how they stack up against players from around the world. Competitions can also be set up and take place in user defined groups (friends, school, company) and in their local communities. This game play data and environmental impact can also be easily posted to the user designated social networks to inform their friends of how they are helping the planet. This will help educate and encourage others to do likewise. We believe that the seamless integration of social media will have an outsized grass roots impact on our target demographic. Users status will increase in the community as they collect more bottles which encourages repeat game play. 

The game is designed to be used on both low end and high end iOS and Android devices for maximum global reach. Phase I of the application is focused on the collection aspect and building the community with phase II focusing on developing a deeper gaming experience utilizing the plastic bottles collected in a digital world. The deeper gamified experience of phase II will increase engagement and retention rates.

The intended goal of the game is to fundamentally change user behavior and train positive recycling habits. We believe that it can significantly impact plastic bottle recycling rates which will benefit the planet and feed the circular economy.

Our world is becoming more and more environmentally conscious with topics such as pollution and climate change making headlines on a daily basis. Some states in the US have built in recycling awareness into the core curriculum for elementary students. The results of the current programs have not led to positive actionable activity with gross recycle rates of plastic bottles dropping from 39.7% in 1995 to 29.2% in 2017. BottleUP has a different take on recycling as it goes beyond traditional recycling education and turns the process into a global game. It facilitates the recycling process by leveraging technology to encourage users to complete the first step by collecting and sorting plastic bottles. The experience is designed to be fun, interactive, competitive, and most importantly, repeatable. It is not a one-off educational program and instead a solution that brings recycling plastic bottles top of mind and encourages positive recycling behavior. One of the most successful cases of a gamified experience encouraging positive behavior is best illustrated through the success of the mobile game, Pokemon Go. The core game play called for catching Pokemon in a physical environment, but the most positive by-product of the game was that users became more active and spent more time walking and exploring their local communities. Within the first 6 months of launching, Pokemon Go users walked 8.6 billion kilometers (company). BottleUP is designed to change attitudes towards recycling and encourage people to participate more frequently to feed to the circular economy for plastics.

The core technology that allows for the identification and counting of bottles is a self-developed computer vision system called bottle eye. Bottle Eye uses deep learning for object detection to localize and identify bottles, the type of plastic (PET or HDPE), and categorize them into classes such as brands and product. The resulting data will be fed into reporting framework that tracks the number of bottles collected from around the world. Bottle Eye will initially work with user uploaded photos and will process the object identification, classifications, and count in the cloud. Phase two of development will see Bottle Eye analyze live video and process the bottle count on the edge (mobile device). Bottle Eye is an automated process utilizing machine learning to improve detection and counting after the analysis of all new media that is uploaded into the system. Bottle Eye is complimented by a self-developed intelligent agent that combs through plastic bottle pictures across the web to collect data sets. We will use supervised learning and feed the augmented output data into the system and supplement it in real time with user collected media to help train and improve the identification and count results over time. The underlying system behind bottle eye can also be applied to future recyclable items such as coffee cups and batteries. The app development will utilize Unity3D or similar platform to facilitate easy porting to the maximum amount of global mobile devices. The app is designed to support low end handsets.

BottleUP is not designed as a one off game and instead a repeatable experience. We expect that over time, every scan or “play” within the game will have long lasting impacts on the individuals behavior and attitude towards recycling. Recycling becomes top of mind for an individual every time they open up the app whether to perform a new scan or check the global leaderboards. The consistent and repetitive nature of collecting bottles and scanning them encourages the habit of recycling but does not overtly inform of the ultimate purpose. The by-product of positive recycling behavior from playing BottleUP will have a long lasting impact over an individuals lifetime and not just when they are active with the game. Also, users will continue to get feedback when they as individuals and others play the game. We will have a global tracker to help users visualize the positive impact that they are having as a collective group on the environment. The data will be presented in a dashboard format for not only users, but the public to breakdown the bottles collected by geography, plastics, brands, and other segments. This will provide a real time environmental impact and positive reinforcement for everyone who comes in contact with the game.

We are currently still in development stage of the application and have not launched yet. The plan is to first pilot in the US to ensure that we have created a repeatable and fun experience. By the end of year 1 we expect to have 100,000 monthly active users and a total of 1,000,000 total unique user. With our usage data and feedback, we plan on making improvements to the service and prepare for a global launch in year 2. This will include language localization and potentially seeking out launch partners in harder to tap into markets. By year 5, we plan to have 5 million monthly active users and a total user base of 30 million users. We are targeting a subset of individuals who play mobile games and that is number is expected to hit 2.7 billion by 2021 (statista).

As a digital offering that can be used on mobile phones worldwide, we have a unique opportunity to quickly scale our userbase and serve a global audience. We have a number of goals or metrics that will stay constant throughout the life of the app. Once we have acquired a user, it is important for the service to keep them engaged while in the app and keep them coming back multiple times a month. This engagement data will show that our users are participating in the recycling process. It is also important to have our users share their progress with their broader community to bring down customer acquisition costs. These operational goals help us develop a more compelling experience on an ongoing basis.

Our ultimate goal is to positively impact each one of our individual users attitude towards recycling and make it a lifetime habit. If we are successful then we believe the collection game can have a transformational impact on multiple generations and measurably increase plastic bottle recycle rates around the world.

Assuming we reach 30 million unique users by year 5 and conservatively estimate they only use the app once and each scan an average of 6 bottles. Assuming that each user sends the bottles to be recycled then we will have helped to keep 180 million bottles and nearly 2,000 tons of plastic out of our world’s landfills and oceans (assuming all bottles scanned were individual 16.9 oz (500ml) water bottles and they each weigh 0.35 ounces).

Slow user adoption is a potential barrier that could directly impact our growth in hitting both our short terms and long-term user targets. A successful global launch of the collection game will require a keen understanding of geographies, people, cultures, mobile phone user habits, and recycling behavior. The way people interact and share gaming experiences are different even among neighboring countries. We will not necessarily have country specific launches for each territory as the app will be distributed through global app stores such as iOS app store and Google Play. As a startup, it is hard to fully understand the nuances of each market and develop localized versions of the app to meet the needs of the consumers.

We will prioritize key growth markets and localize the app appropriately. This will include language and user interface changes. The core scan and count mechanism will stay constant throughout all versions. Software localization is more straight forward and can be accomplished with a larger development team. Optimizing user adoption of the app in key markets will most likely be more challenging as we will need to find local organizations to partner with to promote and share the message of the game. These local partners can help us reach these users either through marketing or leveraging their existing communities. This requires not only requires money and time, but can highly inefficient if we chase the wrong leads. At the same time, social media will be a key tool in bringing awareness to the game. The app has been designed to allow users to easily share their personal game status with friends including game play results and environmental contribution statistics and post it their favorite social networks. We believe that user recommendations are imperative to to help drive mass user adoption.

1 full-time, 2 part-time, and a team of contractors 

Team leader, Norbert Chang is a serial entrepreneur and has founded and served as CEO of two media tech companies in mainland China. The first being a mobile game company which was acquired by the Walt Disney Company. The second was an online video company acquired by a global media company. His ventures have delivered billions of minutes of entertainment to consumers around the world. His previous companies have raised capital from global venture capital, media, and telecom firms.

Team member, Colbert Chang, is currently an 8th grade student at Keystone Academy in Beijing.  Growing up in Beijing, China has given him a unique perspective on the importance of preserving our environment from pollution of all forms.  Outside of school, he passionate about soccer and gaming, which provides insight into our target user and makes him uniquely positioned to work on our product development and design.  

Team member, Dr. Daniel Tsai is currently a research fellow at MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, in the area of design computation, and digital cultural heritage. He has over 30 years of software consulting experience and 15 years of experience in international urban development projects. He brings multi-disciplinary design-thinking and problem solving to all his varied pursuits.

While BottleUP is a for-profit enterprise, it has a social-responsibility mission and operationally intends to use substantial resources towards this mission. This is also a reflection and test of the belief that environmentally beneficial companies are viable.

Our game is designed to be high in usage and we expect to translate the traffic into revenues through advertising and sponsorship. This will include display and integrated content advertising as well as in-game event sponsorship. BottleUP users are unique in that they choose to download and play the game making them a self-selecting audience that cares about the environment. This is a highly targeted group and we will work with companies that are looking for an environmental and socially conscious audience. Ideal advertising partners will have core values built around sustainability, the environment, renewables, recycling, community, and other traits that are aimed at positively impacting the world in which we live. We have broken potential partners into the following categories with examples.

Recycled Ecosystem Products: Adidas, Patagonia, Rothy’s

Eco-Friendly: Apple, Nike

Socially Responsible: Toms, 4Water

Charities: Charity:Water

NGO: WWF

By not subjecting our audience to the broader advertising market, we can ensure that they will have a more seamless and positive gaming experience. An example of integrating brands into the experience as content would be to include them into environmental contribution reports. A report could state, “your 33 bottles collected helped create 3 pairs of Adidas Parley Ultraboost shoes”. We believe partners would pay a premium for this type of integration and audience.

We plan on raising a seed round to help fund development and marketing the launch of the game. After building a critical mass of users, we will then employ the above business model of advertising and sponsorship. We anticipate that the revenue coming in can cover a majority of our ongoing expenses. In the case that the title grows faster than our initial forecasts then we will most likely need to raise more capital to cover server and operational costs. In this scenario, we will fundraise and expect it to be a relatively straight forward process as we will have a live game with positive traffic trends that will help us properly forecast future growth in the business. We are focused on building a profitable and self-sustaining company that makes a positive global impact.  

At the same time, we will explore potential grants that fit our mission, product, and audience. 

While our team has found success in building companies in other industries, it is new to the social impact space. In our own personal experience, we have found that successful companies are not built just on individual strengths, but instead through a network of people who can collaborate and contribute to advancing the cause of an organization. We believe that being a member of the next Solver cohort will help us meet various companies and individuals in the social impact space to both help educate us and grow the company more effectively. Learning from past Solver teams and being part of the broader community will also be beneficial in understanding the nuances of social impact space as well as specific challenges they faced while growing their companies. We also believe that being a Solver team will provide a higher level of trust with potential partners and investors.

We look to partner with the type of organizations that were listed above in our business model section. Not only are these potential partners on the revenue side, we believe we can discuss further opportunities to cooperate on cross marketing and the distribution of the game via their user base and social media presence. At the same time, we would like to explore grant opportunities with organizations that strive to improve the environment through the application of technology.  

BottleUp uses AI to help count bottles that people collect for recycling. Simply put, the AI helps us guess how many jelly beans are in the jar. Since young people are key participants, they will naturally ask “how does this work?”. It is a great opportunity to teach how AI can be used in simple, everyday activities. Teaching kids AI, and even engaging them in helping to train AI to make the system better, are exciting offshoots of BottleUP. The BottleUP gamers are participating in cleaning up their planet, and also helping to teach the AI to count bottles better. 

We would use the AI Innovation Prize to (1) enhance the AI component of the system, and (2) reach out to educate, hands-on, about our cause (recycling) and the underlying AI technology.  There are cases where a jumble of collected recycling are of varying difficulty for a machine to recognize. We will start with simple cases and work up to harder ones. Different countries and regions in the world have different products for recycling. Educating and engaging our participants in training the system will help this issue.

While the main product is the BottleUP game, we recognize the need to enhance the cyclical economy via new businesses that use recycled materials in innovative ways. Our business will try to promote, invest in, and support such ventures coherent to our environmental mission.

Recycling totally engages the concept of the circular economy. On the one hand, the BottleUP game is about materials-recycling for reuse, i.e. re-purposing materials instead of treating it as end of the road waste. Another side of this is promoting new and beneficial ways to reuse materials. Recycled plastics can be purposed for clothing (Patagonia, Girlfriend Collective), accessories (Haiku Bags and Wallets), electronics (Gomi Speakers), and for road materials (MacRebur), for example. Enhancing and rethinking recycling vis. the circular economy means recycling more than just once. The very idea that keeping our precious Earth viable and sustainable requires keeping materials in play: collecting, recycling, reusing, and so on. Materials have to live on in use, and people play a vital role in keeping it going.

BottleUP would use the GM Circular Economy Prize to study and develop ways that the BottleUP game teaches about use and reuse.