APPS: SHANGHAI'S WASTE CLASSIFICATION

DISCOVERING the proper classification of each piece of household waste before disposal and dodging fines of up to 50,000 yuan [$7,200] has become as -

As simple as snapping a photo on your smartphone or talking to it thanks to the efforts of group of young programmers and user interface designers.

They have applied speech and image recognition technologies to apps and other smartphone services to guide Shanghai residents through China's first mandatory garbage-separation plan, which came into effect this month.

The rule requires every household and institution to classify waste into four categories recyclables:
.- kitchen waste
.- hazardous waste.
.- residual waste with a long list of items in each category.

 Noncompliance could lead to fines.

Previously, everything went into one bin, and the dramatic change has made many Shanghai residents worried, along hundreds of millions of people living in 46 cities due to adopt similar rules by the end of nest year.

Many residents said they were struggling to master the details quickly.

To smooth the transition and raise public awareness, Shanghai's municipal government launched a sweeping publicity campaign featuring posters and TV programmes introducing garbage-sorting techniques.

It has become a lasting topic for my family's mealtime discussions,'' 27-year-old Shanghai resident  Fang Chengxiang said.

He said the said they used the Internet to find out how to classify household  waste properly.
''I would often Baidu the name if I got confused,'' fang said, referring to China's leading search engine.

To meet the demand for such information, a number of tech-savvy 20-somethings made use of their programming and design know-how  to roll out a flurry of phone services before the plan came into effect.

Most of the apps and services which began springing up last month in app stores, on messaging tool  WeChat and mobile payment service Alipay, allows users to type in the name of the waste to identify which category it belongs in.

A number of Apps use speech and image recognition to make the process easier.

One of the Apps using speech recognition is Shenme Laji [What Garbage], whose downloads topped  130,000 in the first week after it was released on Apple's App Store early this month.

It was designed by ZZZ studio, a trio comprised of a programmer, an advertising art director and a visual designer who are based in Shanghai and Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

Since they all have 996 jobs meaning they work from 9am to 9pm six days a week the app was designed in what little spare time they have.

The honor and serving of the latest Global Operational Research on Technology and Solutions,   continues. The World Students Society thanks, Dawn.