Every natural system across the globe is affected by the harmful effects of anthropogenic (man-made) pollution. Our earth’s natural decomposition process breaks some of this pollution down, but afterwards we are left with cancer-causing chemicals.

Scientists have found plastic lodged in whale stomachs, table salt, cereals, and observed it in early rock formations called plastiglomerate. Ocean plastic and similar terrestrial pollution plague our beautiful world. The first step to recovery is awareness. So, how can you solve a problem that is seemingly unseen? To begin to answer this question, one must track the litter. An example of this is the great pacific garbage patch (article).

Below is a brief Q&A interview with Sean Lynch, a GIS developer who created OpenLitterMap:

About Sean Lynch

Q: How did your career start? Have you always had an interest in GIS and environmental sciences or was it something you fell into?

A: Back in 2009, I started studying Geography in University because I was interested in understanding more about our amazing and beautiful world. In first year, I took a class that introduced me to GIS and I was hooked right away. Growing up, I played a lot of video games and to me, GIS looked like a video game using real-world data. My interests shifted that day from digital games to digital science and I knew that somehow I would carve out a career using geospatial technology. Shortly after, our class was encouraged to write dissertations in final year, and I started thinking about about what could I apply GIS to. There was, and still is, this area near my house that is plagued by dumping, and littering, and anti-social behaviour. So I thought why not use GIS to put this information on a map. Such maps could educate society about these problems in new and informative ways, and we could use the data to get them fixed. When I started thinking about mapping illegal dumping, I quickly realized there was “micro-litter” everywhere. This was compounded because I do not drive, therefore I have significant time to look at the streets in hyper-spatial resolution. In final year for my BA in Geography, I wrote my dissertation on the walkability of my local neighbourhood looking at car dependency, and I was interested in understanding peoples perception of place and why some areas are littered more frequently than others. However, this was in the pre-iPhone era and I didn’t have the technical competency in GPS surveying and GIS to make maps or perform spatial analysis, but I was fascinated by the technology and wanted to develop those skills. After college I went traveling and upon returning home I did a Masters in GIS & Remote Sensing to get the mapping skills, and a second Masters in Coastal & Marine Environments to study plastic pollution and many other problems & solutions to the planet in extensive detail. I finished my 2nd masters in 2015 with a first-class honours litter mapping dissertation and then started teaching myself how to code to build a missing data collection app to empower society to crowdsource and share data on plastic pollution. Shortly after teaching myself how to code, I found a job as a remote software developer and now I am getting paid by day to become a better developer. Evenings and weekends, I continue to work on the development of OpenLitterMap to democratize access to data on plastic pollution. I don’t use that much GIS anymore, but once the apps are developed and the data is growing at significantly large enough rate, I would love to get back into GIS and even consider a PhD in litter mapping science.

Q: Your Linkedin profile mentions you are a GeoBlockchain developer. What does that mean to you?

A: Blockchain creates a lot of hype, but away from the noise I see distributed ledger technology as the next step of the integration of the digital world with reality. Blockchain allows us to create immutable records and tokenize assets and processes. This is powerful for pollution because we can create databases that the likes of the Trump or China cannot censor, and we can tokenize and reward people for making a contribution to data collection. Talking with the OpenStreetMap community, I see a lot of volunteers, but are any of them getting rewarded? I don’t think so, and I think that’s unfair. I would like to see people optionally rewarded and recognized for participating in geographic data collection. I also think that in terms of pollution, it makes economic sense to pay people to map, as the cost of intervention is significantly less than the cost of not intervening. To this extent, I took the proof of work principle of Bitcoin and applied it to citizen science for the first time and came up with Littercoin which is the first token rewarded for producing geographic information and open data. I think that if we can create an incentivize for people to map, it will lead to the most rapid production of crowdsourced open data the world has ever seen and soon, the new norm will be the production of open global environmental datasets in minutes. For lack of a better term, I call the tokenization of geographic information the “geoblockchain”.

Q: Where do you see your “geo solutions” and development skills in, say, 10 years?

A: I would love to have a crystal ball that can answer this question, but the best I can say is that I will become a senior full-stack web, mobile, blockchain and AI engineer that can hack apps together in minutes!!!! Once OpenLitterMap is more developed I would like to explore a PhD.

Q: What advice do you have for aspiring cartographers and environmentalists who want to make an impact?

A: Learn how to code! I waited far too long to begin, but it is never too late to start. I think java script is a fantastic programming language and everyone should have an opportunity to be introduced to it. For too long I wanted to find a mentor that could teach me but once I found the motivation to learn I found a rabbit hole of information online that I am only beginning to explore. Secondly, use your data collector and share data! We all have these amazing devices that can produce data that can solve huge global problems.

About OpenLitterMap (OLM): Tell us a little about the project

Q: What gave you the initial idea to start OLM? Did you learn anything while developing the project?

A: I answered it briefly above but let me give you some more background information. As mentioned previously, I got the initial idea for mapping litter when I was asked to write a dissertation after being introduced to GIS in 2009. I wanted to educate society about the pollution in our own backyards. However, I didn’t get my hands on an iPhone until I was working in Australia doing door to door sales in 2012, where my team and I used location services regularly to communicate. After saving up some money in Australia, I went traveling SE Asia where I started scuba diving. I spent a few months diving every day in Thailand and became fully embraced by the beauty and threats faced by tropical coastal ecosystems- which I consider the most precious natural resources on the planet. Regularly, we would see huge piles of rubbish washing up on the beach and scattered between the reefs. The diving community was very aware of these problems and would regularly clean beaches, but it was still largely unmanageable. I spoke with a lot of more experienced divers and stakeholders who told me about how much the reef had regraded over the last 10-20 years and using my skills in Geography, I was able to extrapolate into the future and see the bigger picture. I saw huge untapped potential for citizen science, and I came home motivated to do something about it.

When I returned home, I did a masters in GIS and I was introduced to OpenStreetMap. Walking home that day with a smartphone in my hand, I realized there was litter everywhere (Ireland, Thailand, Australia) and that everyone had a smartphone, but there was no way for people to put data this data on a map, or share data on this global epidemic. Worse, few people seemed to realize the scale of the problem which I was only just beginning to unravel. Inspired by the crowd sourcing and democratization of OpenStreetMap, I saw a piece of litter and with a phone in one hand, I stopped for a moment and OpenLitterMap was born. However, the masters in GIS wasn’t enough. I still didn’t appreciate the policy frameworks or the scale of pollution, so I took out a loan of €20,000 to do a second masters in Coastal & Marine Environments where I studied litter mapping and loads of other problems & solutions for the planet in extensive detail which I will launch soon after OpenLitterMap finally gets a basic level of support.

Q: How long did the development take? Has the project been active and how quickly have you seen the user base and associated data grow?

A: The idea began in 2009 but I didn’t finish the methodology until 2015. After college I began teaching myself how to code and on the 15th of April 2017, OpenLitterMap.com was finally online as a web-app. In Q4 2019, I launched the mobile apps for iOS and Android which are currently going through an upgrade. We are growing at about 5-10 new users per day, and we are almost finished recording out first video. So far, we have not received any grant or financial support, it’s just me doing this by myself because it’s important. Once I achieve MVP, I plan on launching the code open source. It would be great if people could join the crowdfunding and help speed that up?

Q: Have you seen any changes in the amount of litter around Ireland after the release of OLM?

A: Unfortunately not yet. Litter is everywhere, and has become “normalized” and invisible for many. Not 1 city or even a university campus has had its litter mapped yet. Once the apps are more developed and the video is online, more people will hopefully appreciate the potential of open citizen science data on pollution, join the crowd sourcing, and together- we can make a huge dent in pollution.