Helping people recycle products in a personalized way
Do you have a problem to recycle some products that are not clearly identifiable as belonging to the plastic, paper or glass bin? If so, YouSort app will solve this problem! Our idea is to create an app that would explain to users to which bin they should put EVERY piece of their waste. After you buy goods in our partner stores, you will get a receipt with a QR code. To find out how to recycle every item on the shopping list, scan the code with YouSort app and click on the item you wish to read about. Easy to use and to understand: this is what recycling needs! Recycling is not just protecting our planet. Have fun with YouSort app and develop a healthy addition to recycling! For every recycled product, you earn eco-points that will, after a while, give you the possibility to get a product for free from one of our partner shops. Enlarge your horizons with educational and explicative videos and texts about why and how to recycle in general. With our interactive map discover places where you can recycle specific waste (electronic, and other waste that can be reused). Premium option will make available some services such as delivery of waste from your home to adequate places, and many others!
Financing our project
The creation of the app
In order to reach more public, we are launching our application not only on Android via Google Play but also on iOS system via Apple Store. Two main markets for mobile applications differ in the fact that users on Google Play are not used to pay for applications while applications offered on the Apple store are paid. Consequently, commercialization on Google play implies limited financing of our expenses via advertisement which, in addition, diminish user experience with our app. On the other side, we would more likely find customers willing to subscribe to our paid Premium account via Apple store.
On the web calculator https://www.combiencoutemonapp.com/, we estimated the cost of the application for iOS and Android for 9800 €. It would have following features: developed by internal developer, medium size (3-8 screens), login via social media, simple data storing, advanced GPS system, engage with users via email. High costs related to the development of the application might be an obstacle to achieve our goal.
Concerning the costs of the technical creation of the application, we could get the support of an association dedicated to environmental issues which could promote our project and help us to find a programmer that will realize the app on a voluntary basis. Even without the help of an external volunteer, we realized that the costs of the creation would not exceed a few thousand euros and that we could actually raise those funds explaining our project on an online fundraising platform.
The rewarding system
The financing will come automatically from the partnership with the food shops. However, it might be hard to convince big structures to get them implementing our application and to reward clients with such vouchers. On the other hand, for smaller structures, our application is a way to attract new customers and that is the side we will develop when we will go out to meet them. Big structures already have their customer base, also, promoting the good reputational effect the app could them might not work since those structures already spend so much on their image through marketing.
We have concluded that attracting bigger structures will not be easy and we imagined the following scenario: at first, we will develop as much as we can our structure by getting partnerships with small structures, then we will convince bigger structure by showing them the success we are getting and by letting them know they could have access to our database on customers’ habits (except private details such as address, email, phone number and so on).
In the future: Implicating the government
Another way to convince big structures to use our app for the future would be to implicate the government as well: the latter could reward those using our application by granting them a kind of tax credit on the basis of an ecological footprint policy. With the development of our application we might not be able to manage the huge amount of data we will have acquired and which will necessitate huge servers (they are costly). To that extent, the project could be partly let to an ecological organization or to the government but we would make sure that nothing is done to generate profits through the app.
Financing the premium structure
First of all, we would like to raise attention on the fact that this premium service is important but actually not the core of our project. Our objective is not to substitute the municipality waste services, but rather to put in place a more personalized service for those who need it. We will consequently not spend too much time on it at the first stages of the creation of the application. By gaining popularity and most of all, credibility, we indeed think that we will have better tools to put it in place.
We observed that the costs of this service would probably be very high for us, however, we refuse to make people subscribe with a high monthly-participation: first because it might discourage a lot of people, and second because when we had this idea, we had in mind to make recycling possible for everyone, even those with weak physical capacities, on the simple basis of their willingness to do it. Thus, a high contribution of the customers would not be democratic like we thought it should be. We have then concluded that the only way to set up a low monthly contribution (five euros for example) is to make partnerships with already existing associations.
