Tolokers help raise awareness about cities' waste disposal

Humans make tons of waste, especially in cities. Urban waste contributes heavily to greenhouse gas emissions, impacts groundwater quality, and attracts rats and other disease-carrying animals. Trash generation is growing rapidly but so is the number of initiatives aimed at proper waste management. Crowdsourcing platforms like Toloka can help with that. Here's how.

Rating trash container sites with Toloka

Toloka recently checked public trash containers to rate the cleanest Russian cities. Tolokers identified overflowing dumpsters, checked garbage collection schedules, and assessed the overall state of trash container sites. The contributors were ordinary citizens – people who pass trash containers every day on their way to work or simply use them to dispose of their garbage.

Their task was to take a picture of a trash container site and answer a few questions about it in the Toloka app. This information was then added to the site's description in Yandex.Maps.

How it's done

To assess and rate a public trash collection site, contributors followed these simple steps:

• Open the Toloka mobile app and go to the "Check a waste container site" task.
• Find an unrated container on the map and go to that location.

• Once there, take 3 or 4 pictures of the container and upload them to Toloka.
• Answer the questions in the task: Is the area paved? Is there a roof or any sort of awning over the container? Is there any trash lying outside the container? What is the garbage collection schedule? Are there separate containers for recycling?
• Submit the input.

Results

In three months, Tolokers managed to rate a whopping 74,686 trash container sites in 58 regions of Russia. Their efforts resulted in a rating of the cleanest and dirtiest cities and helped raise awareness about problems with garbage disposal in some regions.

For example, only 11% of the containers inspected in North Ossetia were clean, so now the regional government reviews the rating every three months to identify problematic sites and adjust the work of the waste management companies that oversee them.

Top 3 regions with the best waste container site management:

1. Moscow
2. Yaroslavl Oblast
3. Moscow Oblast

Improved waste container site management since the project's launch:

1. Sakhalin Oblast
2. Tyumen Oblast
3. Tula Oblast