Inspiration
I work on-campus in a restaurant and have observed the amount of food getting wasted. The restaurant throws away all the food that made during the end into trash/compost and per day food could easily be around 80-100 lb. This made me think that this food being healthy could be utilized in a better way. After some research, I saw the amount of food going wasted and going to landfills affects the environment drastically. Food in the landfill contribute to 24% of the greenhouse gases and 40% food produced is wasted annually.
What it does
The primary approach to resolve this issue is by creating a web app as an intermediary between different restaurants and hotels with NGOs across the region. The NGOs will collect the food that is to be thrown away and use it to donate/distribute to the needy. This food can be used to feed homeless people. The web app will record all the data, like the amount of food getting sent and collected for future analysis. This data will be used to record the decrease in food wastage. A web app shall have a feature where the restaurant authorities will post daily the amount of food that is going to be thrown away. This update on the food can be seen by different NGOs in the same area. They will send a response to their wish to collect the food. Since the NGOs are well aware about the places where this food can be distributed, they will collect the food from the location of the restaurant. NGOs will then have a free hand in donating the food items to homeless people, food banks, or anyone. The NGO has to update the web app on how the food was used which will help us analyze the reduction in waste.
How we built it
The web app is built with HTML/CSS/Bootstrap for front end and Python Flask for Backend. MongoDB is used for databases.
Challenges we ran into
The main challenge was to manage the data since this will have many NGOs requesting many Hotels for food collection. Database consistency should be maintained to avoid problems.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The impact it can create if all the hotels and restaurants start using the web app, the data collection and reduction of food. With this POC(proof of concept) it can be seen that the solution can be implemented and scaled to different regions.
What we learned
Learning MongoDB with python flask and database application and management
What's next for Connect-Bridging the gap
There are improvements in this POC: • Deployment of the application on AWS Flask • Expanding not only to restaurants but grocery stores and other local vendors as well • Analysis of data collected and impact on the environment • Intelligent Decisioning on the data collected to prevent further wastage
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