Lightning Talk: OpenLitterMap – A Revolutionary App to Map Litter

OpenLitterMap is an open source, interactive, and accessible database of the world’s litter and plastic pollution. Inspired by the open values of OpenStreetMap, we apply the same principles of crowdsourcing and open data to litter and plastic pollution. All around the world, 100s of millions of people have been equipped with powerful devices that can collect data but this unprecedented human potential remains significantly underdeveloped. We are developing a fun, open, and rewarding data collection experience to harness this emerging resource, and empowering many people to share data and be a part of the scientific and public process for the first time. Although plastic pollution was first recognised to have a global distribution in the world’s oceans as early as 1975, nothing was done for decades as access to knowledge was restricted. Once social media arrived, huge numbers of people were able to easily share and consume information. This resulted in a huge awakening of global pollution that changed mainstream political dialogue almost overnight. We are doing to data what social media did to information. OpenLitterMap is available as a web and mobile app on all platforms and is free to download and use.