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There is a high need for individual-level waste management education, monitoring, and enforcement in Accra to confront the pollution problems there. Due to poor infrastructure and education, as well as predatory waste export practices in the Global North, many citizens do not have access to useful waste management tools and are not well educated in waste management in general.
This image represents an AI model that assembles itself through the upcycling of available waste materials. One function of this ad hoc AI could be to analyze, trace, and separate the very waste that is its own substrate. There is an entire informal economy based around waste-pickers, who salvage material from landfills and sort and distribute reclaimable materials. This work is dangerous, unstable, and susceptible to human error. An AI model could not only identify waste composition, but also possibly facilitate that waste’s decomposition and/or reclamation.