Fed up with how people litter the streets, a software developer managed to turn his phone into a smart roadside litter monitor. With a mount to place it on your dashboard, the device is now capable of sending thousands of tests to anti-litter campaign groups in your city.
A dashcam for trash. As reported by the BBC, Robin Bennett, who runs a software company in Telford, created the Roadside Litter Tool with his smartphone, which has already recorded more than 3,000 reports in Shropshire, England, and more than 28,000 across the UK.
How it started. Bennett told the media that he gets frustrated every time he sees this amount of garbage on the streets. So what he wanted to know was this happening only in his town, or was it a country wide phenomenon. To do this, he contacted the Clean Up Britain campaign group to find out how he could help, and from that conversation the app emerged.
How it works. The app runs on a phone connected to the dashboard. Bennett says it starts and you don’t need to do anything else. The software is able to automatically take a photo every 10 seconds, analyze the image to detect if there is trash on the shoulder, classify what it finds and upload the results to the platform. The screen turns off after about a minute, so it doesn’t bother the driver.
The app classifies the trash it sees in images and scores them based on different driver, road and day reports. Thus they can be compared and added. The data comes from the drivers, so it is updated as the app is used.
Most affected area. Bennett told the outlet that trash was especially common near small convenience stores, fast food outlets and highway service areas. The developer attributed this to the fact that some people basically finished eating and threw the bag out the window, which in our Lord’s 2026, you still have to see it.
Bennett is sharing the data with Clean Up Britain, hoping it will prompt authorities to take action. Shropshire Council told the BBC it recognized the importance of keeping its streets clean and attractive. A spokesman for the agency admitted to approaching National Highways (the official public company responsible for managing and maintaining the road network) about ways to improve waste management on the A5 and A49, two of the county’s busiest roads.
Cover image Mathias Gelisen
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