Your old laptop got "recycled." Can you prove it?
Neither can most of India. So we built something that can. ♻️
India produces about 1.5 lakh tonnes of solid waste every single day. CPCB's 2020-21 report found only around 47% of it was treated. E-waste alone hit roughly 1.4 million tonnes in FY 2024-25, per CPCB figures as reported.
Universities, companies and data centers are sitting on piles of scrap, paper and old electronics. Finding a legit buyer is slow. Rules change by material. And "it was recycled" is a sentence anyone can write and nobody can verify.
Meet Aletheia: an AI agent that decides where your waste should go, and proves it. 🚀
Snap a photo, add a note, enter your pincode. Aletheia identifies the material, applies Indian waste rules and routes it the right way: reuse first, then recycling, then authorized disposal. That working monitor? Flagged for reuse or donation, not dumped as scrap.
What makes it different 👇
- You choose the trade-off. Slide from "max money" to "max carbon" and watch the chosen buyer change, with a one-line reason why.
- Every decision has a receipt. Our route vs dumping, in rupees and kg CO2e, with the source of every factor.
- It can't be quietly rewritten. Every handoff lands in a SHA-256 hash-chained ledger with a public verify page. Edit one record and the page turns red at that exact link.
- It knows when not to guess. Blurry, uncertain or hazardous items go to human review. Storage devices wait until a data wipe is confirmed.
- Every item gets a passport. Details, status, destination and full traceability in one view.
Not a directory. A decision.
Not paperwork. Proof.
Under the hood
React front end, Python backend. Gemini vision reads the photo. An orchestrator built on AWS's open-source Strands Agents SDK drives five tools: characterize waste, look up rules, find processors, record the handoff and generate the report. Money, distance and carbon scoring run in plain code, so every number can be checked.
Why it matters
Institutions recover more value, avoid emissions and walk into audits with records that can actually be verified. Every tonne rerouted is a tonne kept out of landfill and back in India's circular economy.
What's next: real processors on board, more materials and state-specific rules, buyer authorization verified at the source, and pooled loads so small organisations get better rates.
Honest note: buyers, prices and recovery rates in the demo are synthetic and labeled that way. CO2 factors use US EPA data as a proxy. Aletheia is a routing aid, not legal advice, so always confirm with CPCB or your State Board.
Our biggest lesson? Trust comes from showing your work. 💡
Built with ❤️ by Parth Deshmukh, Keha Chopra, Tarush Mohindru and Abhinandan Kumar for Environmental Hacks, part of the Bharat Builds Tour by WeMakeDevs x AWS.
Would you trust a recycling claim you could verify yourself? Tell us below 👇
#EnvironmentalHacks #BharatBuilds #BharatBuildsTour #WeMakeDevs #AWS #WasteManagement #CircularEconomy #Sustainability #EWaste #Recycling #CleanTech #ClimateTech
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