We all complain about trash. TrashTrails lets you do it productively. Instead of just shaking your head at a dump site, you map it, report it, and earn your place on the leaderboard.
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Every morning in Yaoundé, nearly 3,000 tons of waste are generated. That’s about the weight of 500 African elephants—every single day. But here’s the kicker: in cities like ours, only about half of that trash is actually collected.
The rest? It stays in our neighborhoods. It clogs the gutters in Mvog-Ada, piles up in the valleys of Mendong, and feeds the floods that turn our streets into rivers every rainy season. We’ve become so used to walking past "les poubelles" that we’ve stopped seeing them. We complain to our friends, we blame the system, and then we keep walking.
TrashTrails was born from a simple question: What if your complaint actually became part of the solution?
Source: MINEPDED Urban Report, 2023; Veolia Foundation, 2025
We didn't want to build just another app that sits on your phone. We wanted to build a movement.
TrashTrails is a crowdsourced mapping tool designed to turn every frustrated citizen into a Community Guardian. Instead of just being annoyed by a dump site, you snap a photo.
Source: Ministry of Environment (MINEPDED) / FairPlanet, 2022
We are a team of students who believe that technology should serve the streets it was coded on. We’re tired of the floods and the smells, but we’re excited about the data. TrashTrails isn’t just an app you adopt; it’s a tool you use to reclaim your community. Individual responsibility is the first step. The second step is a smart system that makes that responsibility count.
