Privacy Policy
Last updated July 2026. This describes what RecyclingNet collects, why, and what happens to it — written in plain language for our Windsor, Ontario pilot.
What we collect
To run the service, we collect:
- Account details — name, username, email, and phone number if you provide one.
- Photos of your recyclables — the pictures you submit with each pickup request.
- Location — captured only at the moment you submit a request: from the photo's built-in GPS data, your browser's location (if you allow it) for an outdoor/street request, or the saved address you enter for a home pickup. We do not track your location at any other time.
- Pickup activity — item counts, refund and donation amounts, ratings, messages between you and your collector, and any disputes filed.
Why we collect it
- To match your pickup request with a collector and let them find you.
- To estimate your deposit refund and environmental impact (CO₂ prevented).
- To operate donations to the charity you choose, if you opt in.
- To train and improve our object-detection model. Every photo you submit helps the AI get better at recognizing and counting cans, glass, and plastic bottles — including photos an admin corrects or relabels.
We do not sell your photos, your location history, or your personal information to third parties. Our business is recycling, not data — the only place your recycling photos go is into making our own detection model better.
Who can see what
- The collector assigned to your pickup can see your pickup photo, location, and username to coordinate the pickup — and you can see theirs.
- RecyclingNet admins can view all pickup photos and locations to operate the platform, review flagged detections, and handle disputes.
- We never make your photos or your identity public, and we never share them with advertisers.
If you delete your account
You can request account deletion at any time. When you do, we remove your name, email, phone number, and saved addresses — your account can no longer be used to identify you. However, we keep the pickup photos and records tied to your former account, for two reasons: they remain part of our training data for the detection model, and they preserve the platform's financial and environmental history (refunds paid, CO₂ prevented, donations made). After deletion, that history is no longer linked to your name — internally it's tied only to an anonymous account record, never displayed or shared publicly.
A note on what's in your photos
Please avoid including other people's faces, license plates, or visible mail/addresses in your recycling photos — try to keep the frame to just the items themselves. This protects your neighbours' privacy as well as your own, since photos are retained for model training.
Website analytics
To understand how people use our website — and to fix the parts that confuse them — we use two third-party measurement tools on our public pages:
- Microsoft Clarity records anonymized playback of site visits (mouse movement, clicks, scrolling) and aggregate heatmaps. We mask what you type: values you enter in forms — your name, email, address, and password — are hidden from these recordings.
- Meta (Facebook) Pixel tells us whether visits from our Facebook posts and ads lead to signups, so we don't waste money advertising to the wrong people. It records that a signup happened — never what you typed.
These tools set their own cookies and may process data outside Canada under their own privacy policies. We use them only to improve the site and our outreach — we never sell this data, and it's never combined with your recycling photos or pickup history. You can opt out with your browser's “Do Not Track” setting, a tracker-blocking extension, or private browsing.
Questions or data requests
If you have questions about this policy, want to know what data we hold about you, or want your account deleted, contact us at alero0428@gmail.com.