Plastic pollution is one of the most pressing environmental problems facing the world. One of the sources of these plastics is litter. Popular tourist attractions, car parks, and walking paths can often be hotspots of litter. Identifying those hotspots can be very useful as environmental managers can focus efforts to improve the situation.
Litterbug is a citizen science app that can be used to record examples of litter in the environment. As well as the location, users can record the number and type of litter, the name or brand of the manufacturer, and whether they were able to remove it. These freely available data points are then analysed by scientists, including those at Aberystwyth University and University College Dublin.