Andrey Sryvkov of Belarus has won the 3rd Green ICT Application Challenge, a competition organised by Telefónica and the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) to reward not only the most innovative green ICT application development project, but also that which best promotes smart and sustainable cities and environmental sustainability in urban areas.
The app which won the competition for this freelance developer is Greenyplay, and its aim is to improve waste management in large cities. It does this by allowing users to know in which container to dump their waste simply by scanning a code located on the label of the piece of waste using their mobile phone. Much like a game, the app includes various levels and rewards to encourage citizens to recycle.
“It is an entertaining, practical and easy-to-use system inspired by videogames, which gives it great potential among young people. What is more, even companies will find it useful as they can incorporate Greenyplay into their marketing campaigns, as will governments when it comes to presenting their educational programmes”, explained Mr Sryvkov, who went on to say that he will continue working on the app with the idea of launching it in 2014.
SPECIAL MENTIONS
Special mentions were given to Rizky Ario, of Indonesia, for EUIS, and Lee Knaggsi, of Australia, for Green Champion.
EUIS (Electricity Usage Intelligent System) is a cloud-based app that helps manage domestic energy consumption by measuring the amount of power used by each of the household’s electric appliances and electronic devices, thereby helping users to make savings. For its part, Green Champion helps to compile information about environmental problems and incidents and then share and report it. Users can upload photos and videos into a central database where the information is openly presented.
THE PARTICIPATION OF AFRICA
The competition attracted 65 entries from all over the world, including countries such as Australia, India, Mexico, Turkey and Venezuela. The interest of the Challenge in those apps that might benefit developing countries resulted in a great many entries from African countries including Ethiopia, Botswana, Ivory Coast, Zambia, Sudan, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.
In general, the favourite subject of the developers was energy management.
Thanks to everyone for taking part!
