myPLANET Application: An Innovative Recycling System

Recycling is the process of collecting waste materials and breaking them down into building blocks of new products. An efficient waste management via recycling is essential to protect the environment and health of human population. However, the recycling rate of Malaysia is estimated at 10.5%, which is still relatively low compared to the other countries. The community is still unaware about recycling, they have lack of confidence and awareness in recycling, thus leading to disposal of recyclable wastes. Therefore, a recycling tracking application called myPLANET was developed to encourage public to recycle their waste thus reducing the waste dumping in oceans and landfills. We also want to develop myPLANET application using Android Studio which consists of Kotlin, XML and Firebase, and guide users on how to recycle using the futuristic features in myPLANET app. Modern problems require modern solutions. Aside from Google's Firebase, which will be used for user authentication, data storage, and artificial intelligence, we also used XML, which defines properties and the layout of objects in the app. Moreover, this apps utilized APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allows applications to communicate with each other, and Kotlin, which is the framework, to create the myPLANET application using Android Studio. As a result, a tracking system was deployed in the application which would track the stages of recycling processes. Besides that, a guidelines and FAQ page, mapping system of recycling centres, reward system and recycling programs were also administered to make the objectives of our apps come true. This app will be a steppingstone in meeting towards Malaysia’s goal of a 40% recycling rate by 2025 and achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050.