Heuritech announces its commitment to Surfrider’s action to fight plastic river pollution
Paris, August 2nd, 2019 - Heuritech is proud to announce its commitment to helping NGO, Surfrider Foundation Europe, reduce plastic ocean pollution. Created in 1990, Surfrider is one of the leading ocean protection foundations. The partnership consists of using Heuritech’s cutting-edge image recognition technology to detect plastic pollution in pictures of rivers taken by Surfrider members for pollution analysis purposes.
Plastic pollution is one of the leading contributors to aquatic waste. In 2016, 310 million tons of plastic were produced worldwide and ⅓ of it ended up in the wild. Today, Surfrider Europe is exploring new ways of detecting waste in rivers with the aim of mapping this pollution to reduce it at its source.
Since 2013, Heuritech has been developing a cutting-edge image recognition technology which can identify what’s inside of images. Currently applied to the fashion industry, the platform analyzes 3 million images each day. The same technology will be applied but with a different use in Surfrider’s case: detecting garbage in images and videos.
By automatically detecting and geolocalizing plastic on river banks, the project aims to map out the pollution in French rivers (and one day, on a European scale) by measuring where the waste comes from. With the Surfrider collaboration, Heuritech wishes to expand its image recognition to new territories such as the environment.
Heuritech is proud to take part in this innovative project that has the power to advance the fight for clean and healthy oceans. Rivers are strategic in the fight against plastic pollution as they transport most of this pollution, from cities to oceans.
This partnership is Heuritech’s first step towards a bigger involvement in environmental causes. The company has always been dedicated to helping brands produce more sustainably and plans to strengthen this commitment thanks to 3 key initiatives:
- Creating a lab within Heuritech dedicated to pushing forward our AI for climate change initiatives;
- Involving Heuritech employees in AI, science, and environmental projects;
- Contributing to existing projects through meetups, scientific papers, blog posts.
About Heuritech
Heuritech is a cutting-edge technology company that provides fashion brands with the vision they need to stay ahead of today’s dynamic market and trends. Using advanced artificial intelligence (AI) to translate real-world images shared on social media into meaningful insights, Heuritech empowers brands to forecast demand and trends more accurately, produce more sustainably, and achieve unprecedented competitive advantage.
About Surfrider Europe
The Surfrider Foundation Europe is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to protect and educate on the importance of lakes, rivers, the ocean, waves, and coastlines. It currently has over 13,000 members and is active across 12 countries through its volunteer-run branches.
For almost 30 years, the Surfrider Foundation Europe has been taking action as a recognized authority in three main areas of expertise: marine litter, water quality and public health, coastal management and climate change.
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