Interview: “If we want to have a planet to live on that isn’t shit, we need to turn around and fix this”

📖 Note: This post is from the archives. It may reflect outdated views or a previous name. The blog post is a mirror of an interview with On Purpose about Delta, my final project at Lighthouse Labs. 

In the rapid-fire world of startups and app development, it’s rare to hear about a project that is only meant to benefit the world, rather than selling out for a big payday. It’s even more unusual to hear about a project built entirely by a 17-year-old high school dropout. Willow Bxmxy is the creator of Delta, an app under development at Lighthouse Labs, that aims to point out the environmental shortcomings of our society using the smartphone and something many of us are familiar with: shame.

Delta has three components: a check-in system like FourSquare except for recycling; a platform to donate to a fund benefitting high-impact environmental charities; and a module that lets users photograph litter and abandoned waste, publicly shame the city or neighbourhood where the litter is located, and schedule a community cleanup. We spoke to Willow about the app, the planet, and why she’s so motivated to give back to the planet.

On education: The education system in Canada, at least in my experience, does not foster the people who enjoy learning…I was thinking why am I here when I could be out there learning from my own experiences, learning from others’ experiences, and travelling, getting lost so I can find my way out of it. In my opinion you cannot learn something as fully in a classroom as you can by doing it…I dropped out of school about a year ago and since then I’ve been travelling. I went to San Francisco, New York, I was in London, Wales, Berlin, and Paris and a few other places here and there and it’s all the same: people have this attitude that littering is okay.

On the idea: I was walking through central Paris along the river and there was a pile of garbage floating in the water that was bigger than this room…and while I was standing there someone behind me chucked a bottle onto the pile. And I realized that we have fostered a culture where littering and causing these kinds of problems with the planet are okay. It’s really sad because nobody really understands that when you drop that coffee cup on the ground that can cause environmental damage, or at the very least take a long time to decompose. So I went back to the drawing board and asked how can technology approach this problem and solve it, or at least try to solve it.

On priorities: Technology in general, most of the time it has been this attitude of how can we make money from this problem? How can we solve this but make some on the side? But I’m approaching this problem from a bit of a different angle. Rather than trying to make money from this I’m going to make as much change and help as many people, help the environment as much as I can…We as a collective human race prioritize making money more than we do the wellbeing of anything other than money…If we want to have a planet to live on that isn’t shit, we need to turn around and fix this. I don’t necessarily think that Delta is the solution but I think it’s a step in the right direction.

On trust: I want to partner up with somebody that has a reputable name because nobody will donate money through this platform if they don’t fully know that it’s going to make its way, in full, to a charity. So I’m looking at ways that I can get across that I have no intention of making anything from this product.

On spreading the love: Traditionally when somebody donates to a charity, they go to that website and donate to it. That charity takes all of it. That charity needs the donation but a portion of that, even if that’s just a few dollars, could go to one that’s trying to get off the ground.

On sponsorship: Ideally I would love to receive some kind of funding for this that would allow me to build this properly, get the team to do it, which would allow us to launch this and get it going because I can do this completely by myself but it would be a lot more fun and lot more effective and a lot faster to get it to where I, and my team eventually, would want it to be.

Delta is expected to launch in early 2016.