Bamboo

Inspiration

Our initial approach began towards tackling the problem of food waste: we were all shocked and appalled to learn how much we, as a country, throw away each year. This prompted discussions about why people buy so much fresh produce and end up wasting it, which lead to the conclusion that since it is pre-wrapped, there's no other option. You may not want 6 apples, but because that is how they are sold, that is how you must buy them. This results in increased food waste, and also the wasted plastic. We determined that by focusing on the removal of this packaging, and encouraging people to bring their own, then we could tackle two problems at the same time.

What it does

So, Bamboo is an app you download on your phone which allows you to scan the barcode on your receipt after a shopping trip. True to circular economy form, additional infrastructure must be in place to support this idea: we require collaboration with popular supermarkets, and local or zero waste shops who can add additional information into the barcodes printed on receipts, such as a list of purchased items, and a standard code for loose foodstuff items. The standard code will be applied to those foods without packaging by the custom barcodes printed by the weighing scales present in shops. These barcodes will provide information such as date, weight, cost, type of food and also the new standard code (e.g. FP - Free of Plastic) followed by a number (e.g. FP5) to indicate 5 g of plastic was saved with that purchase, thus you are given 5 points. The points will be calculated by the typical weight of current packaging used, then scaled up or down, depending on quantity purchased.

Bamboo will scan the receipt, view the items bought, identify the standardised code, and you earn points for each time you opt for plastic-free and used your own reusable means (e.g. mesh bags) instead. These points build up until you reach a milestone and you can choose that reward, or continue collecting to get another. These rewards will be reusable products: silicone sandwich bags, containers, products/vouchers for sustainable companies and food retailers.

How we built it

Following our initial meeting and design follow-up, we began by planning the pages we wanted our app to have, then we began building a model of Bamboo on Figma. This started with a splash page, login and sign-up and these were followed by points, account, data, community, scanner and packaging pages. As a team, we split into groups: one pair designed the app and components for a set period of time, while the others completed further market analysis and began the presentation. After this, we demonstrated to each other what we had done, had chance to hear their views and ideas, then the pairs switched sides and continued.

We started on Figma with the intention of using a plugin to export the app’s wireframe to HTML, submit it and collaborate on GitHub with some back-end JavaScript to aid its use. However, due to the necessity of a, albeit unique, non-existent database and barcode, we were limited. After exporting the HTML and CSS to GitHub and realising the time it would take to create a functioning app, we had a brief discussion as a team on what our next steps should be. We decided that creating a prototype in Figma and working on the presentation was the best way forward, because we believed this would yield much better work and more to demonstrate in the time constraints.

Challenges we ran into

As previously mentioned, we could not produce a working model or add further ideas or use APIs because the database and information we need is not available. We were aware of this as we started the project, but we were also aware that circular economy required new infrastructure in place, to align with the new goals and values.

We viewed the hackathon as a sprint due to its short time window of a couple of days, which meant we had to be careful how we spent our time. On Sunday morning we discovered that further back-end coding was going to be too complicated for our combined knowledge and the time available. Therefore, we prioritised a prototype model and working to have our presentation being of high quality.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We made an app! Well, a prototype – but it still looks like an app!

What we learned

The webinars and workshops gave great insights to circular economy, gamification, pair and mob programming and data analysis. Most of the team came from technology-based jobs and studies, but the wide variety of planned talks meant we all learnt about a different area we had not had chance to explore or had even heard of before.

Figma and GitHub were programs only one or two of the team had worked with before, but they were able to share their knowledge and the rest of us were able to learn and use them, with a helping hand nearby. The ability to share screens while we worked made it easier for us to teach each other with essentially personal tutorials and to help the barrier created by the virtual collaboration.

What's next for Bamboo

Supermarkets collecting packaging from customers that can be recycled
Maps showing local recycling spots
Supermarkets have ‘no waste’ for cereals, pastas, rice, grains and more
Incentives to get delivery (such as reduced delivery cost) if you can’t go to the shop by eco-friendly means
Visual representation of the impact that users’ actions are making on the environment e.g. “The amount of plastic you would have used would cover a football field!” and “In the past week alone, we have saved an Olympic-sized swimming pool of single use plastic”
Push notifications to inform users of rewards and points, and reminders to bring their reusable and own containers for food
Encouraging users to utilise food purchased to minimise waste by making recipe suggestions based on the items on a user’s shopping receipt