Swedish app Bower was selected for a six-month Google.org fellowship and $1.9 million in funding to further develop its recycling app. | Photo Courtesy of Bower
With the help of a Google program, Swedish recycling app Bower is expanding its AI-visioning model worldwide, aiming for a world without waste.
The updated app allows users to scan any item, and a computer visioning system and AI program will then identify what the item is made of and use GPS location to determine if it is recyclable and how.
Berfin Mert, co-founder and chief operating officer of Bower, told Resource Recycling that a global system at first “was a dream,” but with the help of a six-month Google.org fellowship and $1.9 million contribution, the dream became reality. Google.org is the tech company’s philanthropic arm.
“What’s new now and has been developed by the help of the Google Fellowship is the ability to also detect packages that do not have a barcode, like takeaway packaging or coffee cups,” she said. “It’s through the help of image recognition and computer vision models, and that has really freed us up. We’re no longer dependent on barcode data, which enabled us to open it up globally.”
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