The Hackathon Team worked on a pool of Sustainability Projects with – among others – 30+ United Nation Development Projects and aimed to identify projects with similar topics and possible symbiotic effects.
Three projects came into focus – located in Barbados, Mali and the Philippines and centered on waste and waste awareness topics. According to Ocean Pollution Data from OceanCleanup the Asian based project would have the biggest impact and hence it was chosen for a closer evaluation.
Microsoft Philippines also recommends and supports the project efforts through their GM Andres Ortola and the Philanthropy Lead Georgia Martelino as well as the Client Technology Lead Kath Molera.
During the live sessions with the Philippines multiple aspects of the holistic project triggered different specialized skills of the Hackathon team. From Azure Cognitive Services to Smart Contracts the bandwidth of the complex project was enticing and challenging. In a mix of Technical Consulting for use case areas in the ideation phase to concrete proof-of-concept coding examples the team was able to answer a plethora of open questions and provide strategies to tackle the problems of this exciting Ocean Emergency Project. Drafting the outlines of a very specialized Object Recognition approach one team was able to pave the way for a circular economy approach, where specific items can be refed into the packaging production process. In this concrete case the Philippines are building a plant which is able to create new Coca Cola and Sprite Bottles from old ones.
Another team was providing insights from the Open Supply Chain Platform into ways of solving the logistics and management challenges of these valuable materials. Topics like Smart Contracts were introduced into the existing concepts.
Meanwhile a third team focused on supporting the Non-Profit in the database definition phase and laid out the groundwork for Business Intelligence driven state-of-the-art Dashboard and Reporting.
The founder was pleased that a member of the Project 15 team confirmed the approach to eye old mobile phones as IOT devices and he was thrilled by many new ideas and concepts as well as constructive criticism the Hacker Team was injecting into the project.
Even though not core competence of a mainly IOT and Ai focused group, some members provided frameworks and research into automated publishing mechanisms for social media platforms – and cautioned the NPO at the same time by pointing to the strategic disadvantages from using bots.
The next steps were laid out with the goal to Motivate IoT students at ReDI-School.org to continue with this sustainable project and engage global companies like Coca Cola, DPDHL, DB Schenker, and many more to participate in the education, disposal and logistics challenges. This hack is also a beautiful showcase which hopefully motivates more people to contribute as mentors and teachers to the aka.ms/redi4good and help growing this amazing concept of the ReDI-School.
All in all, a great mix of top consulting and advisory combined with concrete development of POCs the Hackathon was able to establish the viability of this amazing undertaking and guiding the Non-Profit into the right directions as well as providing repositories with direct and indirect applicable code.
The members were bonding over this important topic during these intensive 3 full days – often till the late hours – and the sessions were sparkling with fun – a wonderful Hackathon full of friendly collaboration, excitement and human touch.
In a heartwarming move many of the hack team members vowed to continue supporting the cause even after the Hackathon by guiding and mentoring the young volunteers and even direct contributing to code solutions.
Countless initiatives are working on solutions. The HotSpot in the world is according to newest data in Asia – with the epicenter in the Philippines.
The x.1 foundation is a private Non-Profit which has drafted an Ocean Emergency Project. The framework requirements for this undertaking are harsh:
- Governments in Southeast Asia generally lack money for the environment
- Existing approaches are unrealistic and tardy
- The reasons for the pollution are complex
While many narratives blame corporations for the plastic flood, the research of x1 proves that this is only one side of the coin. A huge reason for the massive pollution is to be found in the habits of the population. Recycling or even home segregation which is common in Europe for example is totally “unsexy” in the Philippines. Large amounts of trash just land on the streets, parks or beaches.
The solution x.1 came up with is logically a combination of two approaches:
- Following the mantra that “once the trash is in the ocean, it is incredibly difficult to retrieve” – their solution is to “plug the rivers” – which feed 80% of the Ocean Pollution.
- Since money is an issue, expensive mechanics are out of the question. The project uses ancient technologies to create a blueprint for a simple and cheap collector – baptized “The PlasticPlug”.
- Plugging the river estuaries stops huge amounts of floating garbage from the ocean
- The concept has similarities with the successful Baltimore Mr. Trash Wheel
- Developing a different mindset through a nationwide powerful motivation and education campaign in partnership with all major players in the consumer industry
- Implementation of strong emotional influences by using cultural characteristics
Using Cognitive Services to identify specific products in the river trash and forming blockchain-based, smart-contract driven partnerships to solve logistics and other challenges – similar to the challenges in Supply Chain Systems. The payoff is Transparency and Compliance – which massively helps building trust for the foundation in their transactions with partners.
The main goal is to approach the traditionally proud, but unfortunately very uncaring citizen through a pride campaign. For this, the success of the ocean protection is measured in real-time and organized and published to the nation and the world with the help of Azure Cloud Technologies and Business Intelligence Systems. This drives citizen-focused PR engagements which are carried by CSR driven Brand campaigns and financed through a transactional platform – with a huge focus on transparency and compliance.