Nicole Toole: ECGO uses OpenAI's CLIP model for waste image recognition
Nicole Toole · Monetizing Waste? AI Waste Sorting Technology Is Defining The Future of Recycling with AI! · Nov 9, 2023 · at 4:01
Nicole Toole, founder of Eco, explains the underlying machine learning architecture of her waste sorting app during her pitch on The Pitch.
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“And so right now we're using OpenAI's clip model, which creates a caption for every item that you take a picture of through the platform. And then it looks for that item in our database of materials.”
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More from Nicole Toole
Nicole Toole: ECGO's campus user acquisition cost is $1.50
“Our user acquisition cost is only a dollar 50 because, like, we just put, like, we have cookies and whatever to get students to download the application.”
Nicole Toole: Sending 219M tons of recyclable waste to landfills costs $200B
“Two hundred and nineteen million tons of recyclable waste enters our landfills every year. We spend over two hundred billion dollars just to send it there.”
Nicole Toole: Georgia State and Georgia Tech signed $20,000 annual ECGO contracts
“And then it rolled over into a full year implementation, that was 20,000 dollars and so that's what we are currently with both institutions on.”
Nicole Toole: ECGO has 1,500 student users with 33% monthly active rate
“Yes, so right now we have 1500 students on the platform who use it. We have a 33% monthly active user rate, and on average students recycle 35 items each month. So we've seen really great usage, and the fraud was like less than one percent.”
Nicole Toole: Universities pay $75K to $150K annually in recycling contamination fees
“Universities actually pay contamination fees on the recycling bills. And so these are fees that they have to pay on top of what they already pay in recycling. So this can be anywhere between 75 to 150,000 dollars a year just on contamination.”