Let’s Talk Butts

Posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2021

Client	Lisa Chen
Professor(s)	Reg Dyer,
Program	Computer Programmer
Students	Dan LeBlanc, Michael Shaw, Yixin Xu, Mika Yamada

Project Description:

The Let’s talk Butts Campaign was founded in July 2019 in Mississauga, Ontario by Lisa Chen as a part of her Stage 3 community outreach project for the Canadian Conservation Corps. The campaign aims at eliminating cigarette butt litter through cleanups, outreach, litter mapping, creating butt collection cans, and reaching out to stakeholders. The project has since then scaled and reached people from Canada, Vietnam, Philippines, and United States. The campaign was funded by the Canadian Conservation Corps and TakingITGlobal, and it is currently funded by Chantiers Jeunesse.

Users can access the website in English or French and use an interactive calendar and map to find cleanups near them. Organizers can also use the submission form to submit events that are happening in the future, or provide data for an event that already happened, like how many butts were picked up, how many bags used, how many people participated, etc. The website also contains a mailing list that users can sign up for to receive updates about the Let’s Talk Butts mission. A guide for creating butt cans is on the website, as well as a map to submit them to notify local environmentalists of their location.

The website was designed using the Python Django web framework. It uses an internal SQLite database for data storage needs. Additionally, the calendar is implemented with the JavaScript FullCalendar API, and the map is made with the JavaScript Leaflet Map API. Ajax calls are used in some places for a more seamless UI experience. The project is styled using the Bootstrap CSS framework.

The backend of the website was implemented with a REST API, in order to provide easier scalability for future projects on different platforms. Other apps or websites can issue requests to these endpoints to get data or content from the database. For security, the website itself uses the baked in session authentication provided by the Django framework, and the protected API endpoints can only be accessed with the proper authentication tokens.

Short Description:

Let’s Talk Butts is a website for organizing cigarette butt cleanups. Cigarettes are the most littered item in the world and cause great environmental damage. Through the website users can organize and participate in cleanups.

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