Fed-up Shrewsbury driver builds AI litter tracker

A software developer became so frustrated by the amount of rubbish he saw dumped along roadsides that he built an AI-powered “litter dashcam” to expose the scale of the problem.

Robin Bennett, from Shrewsbury, developed the Roadside Litter app after noticing what he believed was a growing amount of litter while driving around the county.

The technology has already logged more than 3,000 litter reports in Shropshire and more than 28,000 across the UK.

He is now sharing the data with anti-litter campaign group Clean Up Britain in the hope it will encourage action, while Shropshire Council said it was exploring ways to improve litter management on some of the county’s busiest roads.

Bennett, who runs a software company in Telford, said he found the amount of rubbish on local roads “really depressing” and wanted to understand whether the issue was unique to Shropshire or part of a wider national problem.

After approaching Clean Up Britain to ask how he could help, he went on to develop what he describes as a “litter dashcam” that records rubbish spotted from a vehicle.

“My software company’s created an app, which essentially is a litter dashcam,” he said.

“The app records the litter that it sees.”