Sustainability

Hayward one of three cities selected to participate in litter study

January 25, 2022

The City of Hayward has been selected by data science company Litterati to participate in the City Fingerprint Project, through which litter throughout the city will be catalogued in an application designed to identify litter hot spots and inform policies around litter prevention. Hayward joins Memphis, TN and Norfolk, VA as one of the three cities selected to participate following a competitive application process.

To date, Litterati’s litter tracking app and software has counted over 15 million pieces of litter geotagged by over 250,000 community members across 185 countries. Currently, Hayward residents and community members can download the free Litterati app and tag the litter they pick up to add to this count. However, the City Fingerprint Project takes the effort several steps further by hiring specialists to canvas the city for litter, expanding the volume of local data within the app, and providing a more complete picture of Hayward’s litter profile that can then be used to make data-based policy decisions. 

The Project will launch in January 2022 and data will be collected for one year, through December 2022, at which time Litterati will provide the City a final report on Hayward’s litter composition and an evaluation of the effectiveness of its existing prevention strategies.

For more information about Litterati, visit https://litterati.org.