Cloth X

"Circular is the new black"Reduce the huge amount of clothes that go to landfill by passing your textiles on to others.

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Inspiration

When we researched the circular economy and saw the statistics about how much clothing that goes to landfill each year in the UK, we wanted to radically improve recycling of textiles. Much of our inspiration came from The Ellen MacArthur Foundation. We decided to create an app to help reduce the amount of clothes being put to landfill.

What it does

Users upload clothes they no longer want, 'buyers' are then able to search and select items as if they were on an online shopping website. 'Sellers' then agree (or not) to the transaction and 'buyer' and 'seller' decide how to send the goods on. The only difference is that no money changes hands.

We wanted the app to be a real shopping experience even though no money would be changing hands and the clothes would not be new. We also wanted to reduce the stigma of people wearing 'hand me down' clothes. We thought the app could also benefit parents of school age children with regards to school uniforms which are costly. We had a vision of whole school communities using the app. We designed the app to be user friendly and uncomplicated. This app will also promote the circular economy and educate people about it.

How we built it

We used MongoDB, Express, React, Node

Challenges we ran into

Time! There are still quite a few features we are on the cusp of implementing. We attempted to implement Mongoose and Typescript, but realised we didn't have enough time to work out the knots. We learned a lot about both, however, and would consider using them in a future project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

For all of us, at least some of the tech was new - some of us had never used React Hooks, Redux or authentication. We were able to connect the front-end and back-end. Even though not all of us knew each other beforehand, it was a brilliant team experience.

What we learned

New tech (see above) How to work remotely with people you have only just met

What's next for Cloth X

A real life meet up! Make the concept a working reality - adding the missing functionality* and helping us reduce what goes to landfill. *we'd like app to have:

  • a user dashboard
  • a shopping cart integration
  • automatic email communication
  • an educational element - linking facts with action
  • be deployed
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