'We thought it had so many flaws': Saskatoon students work to improve City recycling app

Theo Hedley, a Grade 9 student at Saskatoon’s Mariam Graham Collegiate has won first place in an app design contest by improving the City’s Waste Wizard app.

“Our app was called recycle dot IT,” Hedley told CTV News. “It was made to teach people about recycling but also educate them in a fun way.”

He said his team’s idea was developed to improve the Waste Wizard app released by the City of Saskatoon.

“We thought it had so many flaws and so many ways we could improve on that.”

Hedley said his team spent just over a week planning out their app.

“We were all putting in a lot of effort to try and make this really good because this is a new opportunity for most of us so we wanted to do as well as we could.”

Second-place winner, Zeke Andre said his team’s app focused on Saskatchewan trails.

Andre said the idea came to him when he considered what he would do if he was on his snowmobile and in trouble.

“I wished I could send out an alert to nearby riders that I need help,” he said.

There were three people on his team and they spent a lot of time on the design, he said.

“We were spending two maybe three hours every day on it. There were some days where we had to get down to the plan and practice the presentation for the full day and do the work instead of goofing off and doing other things.”

Andre said teams presented their app ideas complete with drawings as part of the competition.

“We didn’t have enough time to make it a reality.”

The challenge took place in January and 25 Grade 9 students at the school participated.