If you’ve ever walked the length of Nimmanhaemin desperately clutching a coffee cup you couldn’t find anywhere to dump, a young British developer living right here in Chiang Mai feels your pain — and has a fun and creative solution.
Harley Treagust launched KrapMaps earlier this year, a free app that maps every bin in a city, crowd-sourced and photo-verified by its users. “The idea came from living in Northern Thailand and constantly not being able to find a bin,” he says. “I thought — what if we mapped every single one, and made it fun enough that people actually wanted to help build that map?”
The app is live on both the App Store and Google Play, and it’s already got 200 users across 12 countries and over 600 bins logged — all through word of mouth alone since its February launch. Chiang Mai, naturally, is where the map is most in need of some love.
The clever bit is the gamification. Finding and photographing a bin earns you points. Daily and weekly challenges keep things ticking over. There are leaderboards, streak rewards, team competitions and achievement badges — plus nine free customisable themes if you care about that sort of thing. Points can be redeemed for actual rewards, including Amazon vouchers, if just being a good person doesn’t quite cut it for you.
Treagust’s argument is that littering isn’t really a behaviour problem so much as an infrastructure problem: people don’t litter because they want to, they litter because they can’t find anywhere to put their rubbish. The fix, in theory, is making that information universally available — and making the act of building that database genuinely enjoyable.
KrapMaps is currently focused on Thailand and has already partnered with Revolution Hostels, with further tie-ups in the works. Southeast Asia expansion is on the roadmap.
If you want to give it a go — and Chiang Mai’s bin map genuinely needs contributors — search “KrapMaps” on the App Store or Google Play. Find them on Instagram and TikTok at @FindKrap, or visit krapmaps.app.