Serious Game On Recognizing Categories Of Waste, To Support A Zero Waste Recycling Program

Picking up and sorting garbage is a tedious task, and the health effects of garbage on the streets of India is grave. Recycling trash into categories (e.g. hard plastic, soft plastic, organic, paper) requires training to do correctly at speed. Major national clean up campaigns as well as neighbourhood level initiatives require trained trainees who can quickly place each piece into the appropriate place. For this reason, we investigated using a serious game to train people in how to recycle trash quickly.Serious games and virtual reality applications expand opportunities in the field of skill development and training, by creating an environment which can be frequently and safely accessed in which one can practice the skills in question. Also, low cost technology like Microsoft Kinect enables gesture recognition which in turn allows for more physical aspects of skills training like the means of embodied cognitionThrough this paper, we are presenting a prototype of the a serious game on how to sort depending on the various categories of waste, as well as the results of a nine person user study. We offer recommendations on how to create an effective serious game for training people to sort waste.