Recycling industry faces many challenges. Creating awareness and solving it from the grass root level is an important part of the initiative. As a volunteer in my university's recycling team, we used to walk around to every tailgate party and educate people about what they should recycle during their party. We also provided them with a recycle bag which made it easier for us to correctly recycle their disposed waste. With the power and reach of alexa based devices, this process can be much more streamlined to a service. My alexa skill, captain planet, aims to provide this service.
The idea:
How would this be different from any recycling skill? Well, I'll explain that here.
Instead of just providing facts or statistics about recycling items, I want to make and measure the impact of the alexa skill on the users. This can be done by dividing into three parts - engage, educate and impact.
i) Engage:
By providing recycling facts to the users, we can engage them to find out more about how to recycle an item and the kind of activities they can perform to contribute to the recycling community.
Sample Utterance: Tell me some facts about recycling a soda can?
Sample Response: The energy you save by recycling a single aluminium can will run a TV for 3 hours. Would you like me to suggest tips about recycling soda can?
ii) Educate:
After engaging the user by providing the user some facts about recycling the desired item, we would like to educate them about some ways to correctly recycle that item.
We also ask the user about their interest in knowing about some recycling tips after the engagement step. The user can respond by saying responses like yes/no. This helps direct the user towards recycling methods instead of letting them figure out the questions to be asked.
Sample Utterance: Get me some tips on recycling soda cans.
Sample Response: It’s better to not crush soda cans as crushing it can get it mixed with paper by the processing equipment … it’s not a good thing, let’s not do it
iii) Impact:
Finally, we try to make an impact by suggesting user some ‘actions’. These actions can be finding nearby recycling services, buying eco-friendly items, joining nearby recycling events and organisations, etc. We can integrate APIs to provide this service.
Sample Utterance: Tell me about recycling bulbs
Sample Response: For several years, CFLS were considered as the best choice for eco-friendly consumers because they are much more energy efficient than typical light bulbs. But there is a big problem with CFL bulbs: they contain mercury, which is not good for the environment or human health. Consider using LED bulbs instead. I can add some LEDs bulbs to your card, would you like me to?
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