EcoImpact — clean the block, and count it properly.
Organized neighborhood cleanups in the parts of San José with the least-serviced public space, with an app that turns every event into an auditable record: kilograms of waste diverted, kilograms of CO₂e avoided, verified by a named person.
The Problem
Public space is not maintained evenly, and cleanups rarely leave a record.
Some San José blocks get swept. Others do not, and the difference tracks income closely enough that it stops looking like an accident. Meanwhile the volunteer response to that gap, a Saturday morning with bags and gloves, almost never produces anything a city, a funder or a neighborhood association can actually use afterwards. The bags go away, the photos go on a feed, and nobody can say what changed.
Two problems, then: the block, and the fact that fixing the block leaves no evidence.
What It Is
A cleanup program with a measurement layer attached.
Organized events, not an app with a map
The program is people showing up at a scheduled place with supplies, insurance and a coordinator. The software supports that. It is not a substitute for it, and a cleanup with no attendees is not an impact record.
Quantified with sourced factors, labelled as estimates
Waste diverted and emissions avoided are computed from published factors — EPA waste averages, eGRID grid intensity, DOE figures — versioned in code and displayed as estimates. Never described as offsets or credits, because that is a regulated claim and this is not that.
How It Works
Four moves, one event.
Pick a site
Chosen with a neighborhood group or the city, weighted toward blocks that get the least routine service. Reported pins help, but a human confirms.
Show up
A scheduled two-hour event with a trained coordinator, supplies, a safety briefing and a hazardous-material rule that is read aloud.
Weigh it
Collected waste is weighed, not estimated by eye. The coordinator records the figure and their own name against it.
Log it
The event is written to the Impact Ledger with participants, volunteer hours and outcome value, ready for the annual report and any grant that asks.
Who It's For
Named plainly.
Under-serviced San José neighborhoods
The blocks where routine public-space maintenance is thinnest. The program goes where the gap is, not where it is pleasant to be photographed.
Anyone who wants to volunteer
EcoImpact is the lowest-barrier door in the foundation. No prerequisite, no credential, no laptop. A student can start here on day one and end up in CodeBridge or Shield later.
Students who need service hours
Logged, verified and countable, with a record that holds up when a school or a scholarship asks for proof.
The Limits
What EcoImpact will not do.
- The app does not launch publicly until the moderation and minors-safety questions are answered. A map that anyone can pin, used by under-18 volunteers, needs a moderation policy and a safeguarding policy before it goes live. That gate was flagged when the software was built and it carries forward here unchanged.
- No volunteer picks up hazardous waste. Needles, chemicals and sharps are report-only and route to city services. This is in the software as a category rule, not just in a briefing.
- No user location is stored. Report coordinates are rounded to roughly eleven metres, so a pin marks a spot without marking a person.
- No offsets, no credits, no carbon claims. Impact figures are sourced estimates and are labelled as estimates everywhere they appear.
- No minors in a program without parental consent, background-checked adults and a two-adult rule. Same gate as every other Miftah program.
- Not a substitute for municipal services. The program supplements city work and reports what it finds. It does not let anyone off the hook.
Honest Status
What's real, and what isn't.
What's real
The software exists and works end to end locally: report, clean, credit, with sourced and versioned impact factors, a passing test suite and CI. The privacy constraints are in the schema rather than bolted on. It needs a legal home to run real events, which is the entire reason this program is here.
What isn't
Zero cleanups have been held. No kilograms have been diverted, no emissions avoided, no volunteers registered. The app is not deployed publicly and will not be until the moderation and minors questions are answered. There is no insurance policy and no incorporated organization behind it yet.
Year-one targets (targets, not results)
- Target: a recurring monthly cleanup at one confirmed site with a neighborhood partner.
- Target: kilograms of waste diverted and kilograms of CO₂e avoided, per verified event, with a named verifier on every row.
- Target: volunteer hours logged in the shared ledger and usable in the annual report.
Get Involved
What would actually help.
A neighborhood association or city contact who can confirm a site, and two or three people willing to coordinate an event. That is what turns this from software into a program.
Miftah Foundation is not yet incorporated and has not applied for recognition of exemption under section 501(c)(3). No application is pending. Contributions are not tax-deductible.