Pirika aims to solve environmental problems with the power of science and technology

On May 15, 2011, the smartphone app Pirika was launched, having been developed by Naoya Takahashi, now our Director, and the rest of the development team. The number of litter pieces picked up during the first month after launch was only 100. Even so, I was moved by the fact that people I did not know at all were picking up litter using the app.

I moved out of my then house to save on rent, and traveled between Tokyo and Kyoto in search of investors. We continued to make improvements to Pirika, and the amount of litter picked up through the app gradually increased.

We incorporated Pirika, Inc. in November 2011.

When the cumulative number of litter pieces picked up through Pirika reached 3 million in 2014, we began to have doubts about our mission. We started asking ourselves whether Pirika was actually contributing to litter reduction over the long run in a sustainable manner. We realized that we did not have an answer to that question. This is because there were no reliable quantitative litter data, and there was no established method of litter research.

We believed that there was no point in sacrificing ourselves to try to solve the litter problem when our approach might not be effective. We also did not want our approach to be proven to be ineffective by someone else. That is when embarked on a new mission.

Despite our conviction, we struggled to develop a sustainable and scalable litter research method. Our initial research methods required more manpower. The downside of relying on manpower was not only the cost and time involved, but also the inconsistency and human error that arose in conducting research.
One day, Naoya had a thought -- What if we recorded on video litter on streets and used the latest machine learning technology to analyze the litter. He took this inspiration to develop a program on his own. We called the program Takanome, which means hawk eye. Once the program was developed, we first hired 20 people to categorize litter captured on videos, in order to teach the program’s artificial intelligence.
Immediately after we launched the program, we began to receive requests for our Takanome-based services from governments. Thus began our mission to gather information necessary to identify the root cause of litter.

Four years have passed since our incorporation. The cumulative number of litter pieces picked up through Pirika has exceeded 25 million. Our research business is expanding, and our revenue and profit are growing.

However, we have not solved a single environmental problem. Litter continues to grow at an alarming rate, and we still do not have a complete picture of how bad the problem is. And there are many other environmental problems that need to be tackled.

We remain passionate about our mission, just as we were when we first started out. We are working hard to do our part in helping humanity overcome what we believe is a growing environmental crisis.

The month of May, which is the month when we launched our smartphone app Pirika, reminds me of my grandfather, who always told me that I should do what I liked to do and understood me better than anyone else. He left this world five days after Pirika was launched.

I love science. I used to tell my grandfather from a young age that I wanted to solve our environmental issues — which were created by science and may be our greatest threat of the 21st century — with the power of science. Pirika Inc. was born to make this dream come true.

I started on this journey by first tackling litter and hope to eventually address any environmental issue. It may take years and my path may be circuitous, but I will always move forward toward this goal, one step at a time.

Fujio Kojima