Plastic Cleanup Coordination and Impact Tracking App for Rural Biodiversity Zones

Objective: To empower rural communities and volunteers to organize, coordinate, and measure plastic waste cleanup drives in biodiversity-sensitive areas.

Plastic pollution severely impacts India's rural landscapes and biodiversity hotspots, threatening wildlife, soil health, and local livelihoods. Many villages near forests and rivers lack tools to efficiently organize cleanup drives or quantify their impact, leaving plastic accumulation unchecked. This challenge aligns with SDG 15: Life on Land, focusing on ecosystem restoration and community engagement.

The proposed solution is a mobile and web app that enables local volunteers, NGOs, and community leaders to register cleanup drives, coordinate logistics, map affected zones using geospatial data, and record plastic waste collection with real-time reporting. The app leverages open mapping and crowdsourcing to ensure transparency and accountability.

Key features include geotagged event creation, volunteer sign-up, real-time progress tracking, collection data upload (with photo evidence), local biodiversity risk mapping, and dashboard analytics for impact measurement. The working prototype will integrate OpenStreetMap and ISRO Bhuvan for spatial visualization and use public datasets to highlight priority areas.

Measurable impact is achieved by reporting cleanup results (volume, area, participation), mapping reduction in plastic hotspots, and enabling local stakeholders to share outcomes with district authorities and NGOs. The solution can scale across rural India, fostering community-driven ecosystem restoration and improving SDG 15 indicators.