Inspiration
We were inspired by how difficult and inaccessible it is for everyday shoppers to understand the environmental impact of their online purchases. While sustainability data exists, it’s often hidden or ignored in the rush of convenient shopping. We wanted to make eco-conscious decisions feel intuitive, visual, and even fun by turning sustainable shopping into something people want to engage with.
What it does
BloomCart is a Google Chrome extension that gamifies sustainable shopping on Amazon. As users browse products, BloomCart analyzes their environmental impact and assigns a sustainability grade. These choices directly affect a virtual plant: low-carbon purchases help it grow, while high-carbon choices cause it to wilt. Over time, users can visually track their impact and build better shopping habits.
How we built it
We built BloomCart using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS to create the Chrome extension pop-up, sidebar, and floating interface. Gemini AI is used to extract and analyze product data from Amazon listings, while the Climatiq API calculates accurate carbon footprint estimates. We used MongoDB to store purchase history and plant progress, enabling persistent tracking across sessions.
Challenges we ran into
We encountered challenges when trying to connect to API endpoints to the Gemini API. We also went through multiple iterations to optimize the user's interface.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
BloomCart successfully calculates carbon intensity of amazon products and categorize into different tiers leading to a growing or withering plant.
What's next for BloomCart
Add leaderboards and friend comparisons. Let users compete on who can maintain the healthiest plant or challenge friends to sustainable shopping streaks.
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