Cherish your Food

Inspiration

Hi, we are ToughCookies - a group of beginner female developers who have had little to no software experience but wanted to see what a Hackathon is all about! Since everything (from the idea to the execution) was new to us, we entered a world that was filled with a lot of unknowns, but even more potential. Our team is passionate about food and the environment, and we’re also deeply concerned about the growing problem of food waste. In order to promote this issue, our team decided to venture into this project. We envisioned a website and mobile application that would raise awareness about food waste, by inviting users to see how the leftovers on their plate in a single meal translate to significant amounts of resource wastage. This resource isn’t easy to picture--it spans multiple industries, is involved in every stage of the production process, and multiplies across days, weeks, months and years.

What it does

Our website makes it easy for anyone to see the effects of even a small amount of food waste. All the user has to do is type in the type and amount of food they wasted, and the website displays a comprehensive overview of the impact of that wastage, currently through numerical data. The end ‘Result’ calculated after inputting is representative of the upstream water wasted in consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

How we built it

First, we got together and planned out our project over zoom. We wrote out the various aspects of the project that we needed to complete and divided tasks accordingly. We also conducted research into resource wastage associated with various foods in each food group, collecting data to be used in the website.

We created the framework for our website using HTML, adding input tags, buttons, IDs, and options for dropdown menus. To make the website interactive, we used javascript so that when the “Calculate” button is pressed, the user inputs would be processed and calculated values of water loss and carbon emissions would be displayed on the website. Lastly, we used CSS to add style--centering the text, adding a colorful background and using different fonts. We used lots of food puns, just for fun :)

Challenges we ran into

Our entire team had no experience using Git and GitHub. Together, we tackled various issues that arose as we learned how to create branches, commit our changes and push/pull from our remote repo. We also had no experience coding in HTML, CSS and Javascript! It was a challenge as we picked up the new syntax and spent hours debugging together.

From start to finish, our team continuously learned from the obstacles and challenges faced in building this project. Some included not being entirely proficient in software development to working with creating a website completely from scratch. Our team in working on the project, also greatly improved in design thinking.

Accomplishments that we’re proud of

We’re proud of how much we learned in just two days! We’re also proud of the fact that our website not only works, but it’s also very playful and creative! Lastly, we’re proud of our code--for complete newbies, our final code is very clean, readable and well-commented! Overall, we got waaaaaayyyyy more done than we would ever have expected!

What we Learned

We learned A LOT! We learned HTML, CSS and Javascript. We also learned how to use Git and GitHub. And last but not least, we learned how to code together as a team :)

What’s next for Cherish Your Food

First, we intend to create additional webpages in our website under the “Our Story”, “WTF Does This All Bean,” “Nothing imPastable” and “[OLIVE]-bout Us.” For example, “Nothing imPastable” would go on to provide additional information/suggestions about dietary changes a user could make. We also intend to create animated visuals and graphics that aid in the user-friendly interface. Ultimately, we envision creating a mobile application that would elevate the ease and convenience of accessing this tool by adding a photo feature to take a picture of your finished plate. There’s also always more knowledge to learn, so adding in additional information beyond water and CO2 waste, such as energy, would also add more value to the purpose of Cherish Your Food.