PlastiMap: A mobile app for engaging citizens, informing stakeholders, and improving knowledge development and flow by unifying data

How do we heighten awareness of plastic pollution-related issues for all stakeholders across Europe using evidence-based information which cuts through misinformation distortions? How should all participants in the plastic life cycle decide—using data—become more nimble in addressing issues related to increasing amounts of plastic waste in our environment? How do we learn more, on a large scale, about how citizens and consumers think about the plastic life cycle? Enabling citizens, consumers, and other life cycle stakeholders to observe, monitor, and learn about the environmental impacts of plastic pollution requires rethinking approaches to providing access to data and information gathered from multiple sources. PlastiMap aims at creating a collaborative, educational mobile application (“app”) and data platform uniting prior results from interdisciplinary research with new data gathered by citizen scientists across Europe . The pilot app, will include links to high-quality, curated information regarding different kinds of plastics, a plastics footprint calculator and an interactive educational game all user-tested and piloted leveraging the educational and governmental networks in the SIAs. Citizen scientists in SIAs will also gather data fed to the platform with specially-equipped drones and wearable sensors, testing and engaging with new environmental sampling technologies. The PlastiMap platform,will exploit advanced data analytics and automatic image recognition techniques to process data and shall serve as a tool to (i) support the prioritisation of Europe’s Plastics Strategy goals; (ii) handle potentially politically sensitive data; (iii) help in developing future prevention, interception, and clean-up initiatives; and (iv) inform governmental decision makers, producers, and others about where and how current recycling and plastic-related legislative efforts fail or could be improved. T.