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This story starts with these two --
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my kids.
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We were hiking in the Oakland woods
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when my daughter noticed
a plastic tub of cat litter in a creek.
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She looked at me and said,
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"Daddy?
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That doesn't go there."
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When she said that,
it reminded me of summer camp.
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On the morning of visiting day,
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right before they'd let our anxious
parents come barreling through the gates,
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our camp director would say,
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"Quick! Everyone pick up
five pieces of litter."
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You get a couple hundred kids
each picking up five pieces,
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and pretty soon, you've got
a much cleaner camp.
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So I thought,
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why not apply that crowdsourced
cleanup model to the entire planet?
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And that was the inspiration
for Litterati.
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The vision is to create
a litter-free world.
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Let me show you how it started.
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I took a picture of a cigarette
using Instagram.
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Then I took another photo ...
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and another photo ...
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and another photo.
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And I noticed two things:
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one, litter became artistic
and approachable;
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and two,
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at the end of a few days,
I had 50 photos on my phone
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and I had picked up each piece,
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and I realized that I was keeping a record
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of the positive impact
I was having on the planet.
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That's 50 less things that you might see,
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or you might step on,
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or some bird might eat.
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So I started telling people
what I was doing,
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and they started participating.
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One day,
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this photo showed up from China.
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And that's when I realized
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that Litterati was more
than just pretty pictures;
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we were becoming a community
that was collecting data.
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Each photo tells a story.
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It tells us who picked up what,
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a geotag tells us where
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and a time stamp tells us when.
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So I built a Google map,
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and started plotting the points
where pieces were being picked up.
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And through that process,
the community grew
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and the data grew.
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My two kids go to school
right in that bullseye.
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Litter:
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it's blending into
the background of our lives.
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But what if we brought it
to the forefront?
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What if we understood exactly
what was on our streets,
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our sidewalks
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and our school yards?
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How might we use that data
to make a difference?
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Well, let me show you.
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The first is with cities.
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San Francisco wanted to understand
what percentage of litter was cigarettes.
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Why?
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To create a tax.
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So they put a couple of people
in the streets
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with pencils and clipboards,
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who walked around collecting information
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which led to a 20-cent tax
on all cigarette sales.
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And then they got sued
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by big tobacco,
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who claimed that collecting information
with pencils and clipboards
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is neither precise nor provable.
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The city called me and asked
if our technology could help.
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I'm not sure they realized
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that our technology
was my Instagram account --
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(Laughter)
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But I said, "Yes, we can."
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(Laughter)
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"And we can tell you
if that's a Parliament or a Pall Mall.
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Plus, every photograph
is geotagged and time-stamped,
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providing you with proof."
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Four days and 5,000 pieces later,
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our data was used in court
to not only defend but double the tax,
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generating an annual recurring revenue
of four million dollars
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for San Francisco to clean itself up.
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Now, during that process
I learned two things:
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one, Instagram is not the right tool --
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(Laughter)
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so we built an app.
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And two, if you think about it,
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every city in the world
has a unique litter fingerprint,
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and that fingerprint provides
both the source of the problem
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and the path to the solution.
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If you could generate a revenue stream
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just by understanding
the percentage of cigarettes,
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well, what about coffee cups
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or soda cans
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or plastic bottles?
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If you could fingerprint San Francisco,
well, how about Oakland
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or Amsterdam
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or somewhere much closer to home?
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And what about brands?
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How might they use this data
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to align their environmental
and economic interests?
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There's a block in downtown Oakland
that's covered in blight.
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The Litterati community got together
and picked up 1,500 pieces.
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And here's what we learned:
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most of that litter came
from a very well-known taco brand.
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Most of that brand's litter
were their own hot sauce packets,
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and most of those hot sauce packets
hadn't even been opened.
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The problem and the path
to the solution --
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well, maybe that brand only
gives out hot sauce upon request
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or installs bulk dispensers
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or comes up with more
sustainable packaging.
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How does a brand take
an environmental hazard,
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turn it into an economic engine
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and become an industry hero?
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If you really want to create change,
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there's no better place to start
than with our kids.
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A group of fifth graders picked up
1,247 pieces of litter
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just on their school yard.
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And they learned that the most
common type of litter
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were the plastic straw wrappers
from their own cafeteria.
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So these kids went
to their principal and asked,
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"Why are we still buying straws?"
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And they stopped.
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And they learned that individually
they could each make a difference,
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but together they created an impact.
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It doesn't matter
if you're a student or a scientist,
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whether you live in Honolulu or Hanoi,
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this is a community for everyone.
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It started because of two little kids
in the Northern California woods,
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and today it's spread across the world.
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And you know how we're getting there?
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One piece at a time.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)