Date of Award

6-14-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Santa Clara : Santa Clara University, 2024

Department

Computer Science and Engineering

First Advisor

Shiva Jahangiri

Abstract

Recycling is a crucial process that has a positive impact on nature, cleans the environment, and saves time and money. Classifying recyclables by material and recycling these items accordingly helps make our world more environmentally-friendly and a better place to live.

In the recycling system in Montevideo, Uruguay, third-party contractors hired by San Vicente transport clients’ recyclables to a central recycling center or to a person that does recycling. In the past, San Vicente has transported recyclables though horse and buggy transportation. However, there has been a push from the city to replace the horses with motorcycles to reduce animal waste. As the first approach, San Vicente used pen and paper for tracking the type, weight, and pickup location of the received materials. Losing the paper on the field due to the nature of the job and rain, lack of a standard template for collecting the data, as well as its lack of error-handling features are some of the downsides of the pen and paper approach. Simplicity of using pen and paper, however, is considered as the pros of this approach.

To improve this process, San Vicente tried using Google Forms for collecting information and storing them into spreadsheets which could then later be used by the admins to verify the data and generate monthly reports for their clients. While this approach alleviates the challenges of losing papers, its usability is more complex for the field workers with limited literature, math, and technological skills.

To solve this problem, we made a full-stack application that tracks recycling data and reports accurate pickup totals and classification details to clients. We designed and developed MonteRecycle using React Native (for the UI), Postgres (for strong data), React JS (for the admin web application), and Google Cloud (for hosting the Postgres). Additionally, we developed the admin website to display all of the data gathered in the mobile application to the administrator of this recycling process. Our project is successfully implemented, tested, and provided as a downloadable Android APK to San Vicente to be used on the field as their main framework for entering and organizing data as well as generating monthly reports for San Vicente’s clients. Through this project, we learned that change is inevitable in the software development process and that user feedback is the most important feedback we can get to improve our application.

Download

Share

COinS