Heavy Garbage Tinder app set to launch in Cape Breton

Technology developers in Sydney have created an app called Heavy Garbage Tinder. 

Much like the better-known app that allows people to search for potential romantic partners, this incarnation is all about trash — what's known in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality as heavy garbage.

Once a year, in the spring, the municipality holds a special collection of larger household items. All the unwanted stuff is left on the sidewalk or the side of the road for garbage collectors to pick up. 

But heavy garbage time is also a boon to so-called garbage pickers, people who go from pile to pile looking for items that still have some use or for things they can sell.

Allyson White and Wendy Muise created the app. 

"We thought, 'Let's bring new meaning to picking up on Tinder,'" joked White.

She's a student at the Uhma Institute of Technology, or UIT, a program of Cape Breton University. Muise works there. 

"That we can capitalize on the phenomenon, locally, of heavy garbage, and globally, of Tinder seemed like a great way to put the two together as a marriage of simplicity," said Muise.

The idea came to them during a local hack-a-thon competition. 

White describes it as very user-friendly. 

"You would just take a picture of your items and you would hashtag them," White explained. "If you were looking for a chair, you would be able to search from our hashtags and see a list of all the chairs in your area and you could go and pick them up."

Users who download the app will also find a map that lets them plan their route.

White and Muise are going to meet with municipal officials to get a sense of how much heavy garbage was collected last year. They hope to divert some of the trash from landfills. 

Muise says they're looking for feedback on the app.

With this heavy garbage season set as a beta test for the Heavy Garbage Tinder app, the women plan to develop the app on a wider scale throughout the summer.