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This story starts with these two --

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my kids.

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We were hiking in the Oakland woods

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when my daughter noticed
a plastic tub of cat litter in a creek.

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She looked at me and said,

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"Daddy ...

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that doesn't go there."

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When she said that,

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it reminded me of summer camp.

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On the morning of visiting day,

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right before they'd let our anxious
parents come barreling through the gates,

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our camp director would say,

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"Quick! Everyone go pick up
five pieces of litter."

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You get a couple hundred kids
each picking up five pieces,

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and pretty soon you've got
a much cleaner camp.

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So I thought,

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why not apply that crowdsourced
cleanup model to the entire planet?

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And that was the inspiration
for Litterati.

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The vision is to create
a litter-free world.

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Let me show you how it started.

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I took a picture of a cigarette
using Instagram.

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Then I took another photo ...

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and another photo ...

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and another photo ...

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and I noticed two things.

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One: litter became artistic
and approachable.

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And two:

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at the end of a few days,

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I had 50 photos on my phone

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and I had picked up each piece,

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and I realized that I was keeping a record

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of the positive impact
I was having on the planet.

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That's 50 less things that you might see,

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or you might step on,

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or some bird might eat.

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So I started telling people
what I was doing,

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and they started participating.

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One day,

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this photo showed up from China,

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and that's when I realized that Litterati
was more than just pretty pictures;

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we were becoming a community
that was collecting data.

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Each photo tells a story.

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It tells us who picked up what,

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a geotag tells us where

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and a [time stamp] tells us when.

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So I built a Google map,

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and started plotting the points
where pieces were being picked up.

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And through that process,

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the community grew,

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and the data grew.

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My two kids go to school
right in that bullseye.

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Litter.

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It's blending into
the background of our lives,

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but what if we brought it
to the forefront?

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What if we understood exactly
what was on our streets,

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our sidewalks

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and our schoolyards?

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How might we use that data
to make a difference?

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Well, let me show you.

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The first is with cities.

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San Francisco wanted to understand
what percentage of litter was cigarettes.

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Why?

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To create a tax.

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So they put a couple of people
in the streets with pencils and clipboards

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who walked around collecting information

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which led to a 20-cent tax
on all cigarette sales.

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And then they got sued ...

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by big tobacco,

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who claimed that collecting information
with pencils and clipboards

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is neither precise nor provable.

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The city called me and asked
if our technology could help ...

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not sure they realized that our
technology was my Instagram account --

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(Laughter)

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But I said, "Yes we can."

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(Laughter)

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And we can tell you if that's
a Parliament or a Pall Mall.

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Plus, every photograph
is geotagged and [time stamped],

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providing you with proof.

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Four days and 5,000 pieces later,

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our data was used in court to not
only defend but double the tax,

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generating an annual recurring
revenue of four million dollars

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for San Francisco to clean itself up.

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Now, during that process
I learned two things.

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One: Instagram is not the right tool --

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(Laughter)

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so we built an app.

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And two:

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if you think about it,

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every city in the world
has a unique litter fingerprint,

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and that fingerprint provides
both the source of the problem

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and the path to the solution.

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If you could generate a revenue stream

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just by understanding
the percentage of cigarettes,

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well, what about coffee cups ...

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or soda cans ...

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or plastic bottles?

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If you could fingerprint San Francisco,

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well, how about Oakland ...

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or Amsterdam ...

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or somewhere much closer to home?

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And what about brands?

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How might they use this data

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to align their environmental
and economic interests?

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There's a block in downtown Oakland
that's covered in blight.

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The Litterati community got together
and picked up 1500 pieces.

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And here's what we learned.

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Most of that litter came from
a very well know taco brand.

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Most of that brand's litter
were their own hot sauce packets,

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and most of those hot sauce packets
hadn't even been opened.

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The problem and the path
to the solution --

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well, maybe that brand only
gives out hot sauce upon request,

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or installs bulk dispensers,

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or comes up with more
sustainable packaging.

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How does a brand take
an environmental hazard,

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turn it into an economic engine,

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and become an industry hero?

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If you really want to create change,

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there's no better place to start
than with our kids.

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A group of fifth graders picked up
1247 pieces of litter

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just in their schoolyard.

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And they learned that the most
common type of litter

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were the plastic straw wrappers
from their own cafeteria.

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So these kids went to their
principal and asked,

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"Why are we still buying straws?"

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And they stopped.

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And they learned that individually
they could each make a difference,

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but together they created an impact.

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It doesn't matter if you're
a student or a scientist,

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whether you live in Honolulu or Hanoi,

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this is a community for everyone.

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It started because of two little kids
in the Northern California woods,

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and today it's spread across the world.

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And you know how we're getting there?

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One piece at a time.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)