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Team Name: Aliens01

The big why behind our cause:

According to sas.org.uk, 8 million pieces of plastic are used daily in Egypt. That is, 300 million pieces of plastic are used a year in Egypt. It is too sad to know that only 30% is recycled, however, the rest is left behind to pollute the environment. For example, Hurghada Environment protection and conservation association, 70% of the sea turtles that died in 2006 died because of plastics. In our solution, we can confidently estimate that the figure of plastic recycled will rise dramatically. For example, the recycling of water bottles will rise to 60% to 70%.

Summary of our idea:

1. For each citizen, there will be an account that keeps a record of the amount of plastic that the citizen posses in addition to points( The points system will be explained later).
2. Each supermarket will have a database storing the weight of plastic in each product. The database will be created by our company using the publicly available information through the producer of the plastic product.  
3. When a customer purchases some products from the supermarket, the final receipt will display the amount of the plastic in the purchased products. The customer will open his/her account, then a QR code specific to that customer will be displayed. The cashier will scan that QR code to add the weight of the purchased plastic to the account of the customer.
4. There will be specific bins for the disposable of plastic. The recycle bin has two parts. Part A is responsible for weighing the amount of plastic to be disposed, the weight is subtracted from the customer’s account, then the plastic waste is transferred to Part B. The customer takes points for the plastic disposed.
5. The customer will receive discounts in supermarkets that our start-up has teamed up with based upon the amount of points he/she has.
6. There are two business edges that can be accomplished with the data collected. The first one is by analyzing the data of the type of plastic used in each area. For example, in Eltamgamo3 district, people can use water brand A more than any other brand. In madinet nasr district, people tend to use water brand B more than any other brand. This data can be detected using the plastic trash that will be recycled. This information can be sold to some companies to redirect  their marketing campaigns. The other business edge is using the information collected about individual customers. If we assume there is a particular customer called Mickel. Suppose Mickel bought 1000 grams of plastic last month, but recycled 100 grams only of the plastic. Now, this indicates that more marketing campaigns ( campaigns encouraging plastic recycling ) should target people like Mickel. Analyzing this type of information can be sold to foundations that are concerned with reducing plastic pollution so that they can redirect their marketing campaigns to the correct audience, especially on the social media.
7. There is an edge to our solution that is very specific to Egypt. In Egypt, we have to consider the informal section that is represented by the informal trashmen, who can be an enemy to our business. We can employ these trashmen to make them work as repairmen for the trashcans, or they can even collect the plastic that has been stored in the trashcans and deliver them to recycling companies. This way, we can avoid having street fights with those trashmen.
8. One very interesting edge of our solution is the fact that we can make sure that the bottles of water companies are recycled and are not misused( we mean that someone may refill the bottle with non-clean water and re-sell it as an original water bottle).

Aliens01 team: Mohamed Basyouni, Omar Diaa, Abdelrahman Fawzy, Ziad Tarek