BinCam: Waste Logging for Behavioral Change

We present BinCam, a personal informatics system to monitor individuals’ food waste and recycling behavior. As such, it uses an augmented kitchen bin to automatically capture and log an individual’s waste management activity. Each time the bin is used, a mobile phone installed in the inside of the lid captures an image of the contents and uploads it to a Facebook application. The application offers various visualizations of individuals’ bin usage to increase their awareness of the items they disposed of. Applying Facebook as a platform for reflection offers the potential to engage individuals to regularly use the application. In addition, we regard the social network of Facebook, with its communication dynamics and social influences, as a powerful source in changing personal attitudes and behavior. In this scope, the paper discusses several challenges for designing and evaluating persuasive personal informatics systems.