CarbonWise — Personal Carbon Footprint Tracker

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  User logs transport activity by selecting travel mode and distance. The system calculates transport carbon emissions instantly.

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  Simple transport input interface with mode selection and distance entry for quick carbon tracking.

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  Food tracking module where users select food type and quantity to estimate dietary carbon footprint.

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  Energy tracking screen for entering electricity usage in kWh to compute home energy emissions.

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  Interactive dashboard showing carbon footprint by category and weekly emission trends using visual charts.

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  Gamified dashboard with eco score, earned badges, total emissions summary, and AI recommendation preview.

Inspiration

Climate change and sustainability are big global problems, but most individuals don’t know how their daily habits translate into carbon impact. I wanted to build a simple tool where a user can log normal activities and instantly see their carbon footprint with practical suggestions to improve.

What it does

CarbonWise is a personal carbon footprint tracking web app. Users log transport, food, and electricity usage, and the system converts that into carbon emissions. It shows a visual dashboard, eco score, badges, and AI-based recommendations to help reduce environmental impact.

How we built it

Built a Next.js + Tailwind frontend for activity logging and dashboard UI

Built a FastAPI backend for carbon calculations and scoring

Designed a PostgreSQL-compatible schema for user and activity data

Created a modular carbon calculation engine in Python

Added a gamification layer with score and badges

Built an AI recommendation prompt generator based on footprint breakdown

Deployed frontend on Vercel and backend on Render

Challenges we ran into

Connecting frontend dashboard with backend live calculation data

Handling API deployment without paid services

Making charts update dynamically instead of using dummy values

Managing environment variables and deployment URLs correctly under time pressure

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Built a full working full-stack prototype during hackathon time

Created modular carbon calculation logic

Added gamification (score + badges) instead of only raw numbers

Integrated an AI recommendation layer based on user behavior

Successfully deployed and made it runnable online

What we learned

FastAPI + Next.js integration workflow

How to structure modular calculation engines

How to deploy full-stack apps on free tiers

How to design user-focused sustainability tools

How to move from idea → working prototype quickly

What's next for CarbonWise — Personal Carbon Footprint Tracker

Real API integrations for maps and food databases

User accounts and history tracking

Weekly and monthly carbon reports

Team and community sustainability challenges

Automated carbon offset suggestionshttps://youtu.be/9m7V5cKxTjo

Built With

• fastapi
• git
• github
• github-copilot
• next.js
• ollama
• postgresql-(schema-design)
• python
• react
• recharts
• render
• tailwind-css
• uvicorn
• vercel