Eco Eats

Inspiration

Did you know that in the United States alone, 80 million tons of food are wasted every year? This is equal to 149 BILLION meals and in terms of money, that's $444 billion! Think of how many people this could feed... a LOT right?! But, what if you could do something to help improve these statistics and reduce the amount of food wasted, ultimately ensuring that more people get access to the food that they need. Our solution, Eco Eats!

What it does

Eco Eats is a web application that allows users to minimize food waste and promotes sustainable eating. Our main feature is that users are able to input ingredients that they have at home and find recipes using these ingredients. This helps to reduce the amount of food waste that they are individually generating by ensuring that they are using the ingredients that they already have around first and not buying all new ingredients every time they would like to cook something.

Another component of our website is that we have a page dedicated eco-friendly ingredients that you can use to make recipes that minimize waste. This page will also include what we would like to call "Superstar Ingredients." These are ingredients that are eco-friendly due to their climate-friendly, low-carbon and low-impact nature. Furthermore, here you can also find our favorite recipes using these "Superstar Ingredients."

How we built it

When we started working on this project, we first had to decide whether we would be creating a website or an app. Ultimately, we decided to create a website.

We split up the tasks into two parts: the front end and the backend. In the backend, we used python to parse the dataset (which we had to create our own csv file for) with all of the recipes. In the frontend, we displayed the outputs of the algorithms in a web-application format.

For the backend, after creating the dataset, we parsed and cleaned the data using the pandas library which also helped us convert the data into a form we could more easily manipulate in the python script. Then we applied function in the python script which utilized the data from the data set and asked for user input. These two aspects were then inputted into functions in which algorithms were developed to output recipes that would help the user reduce wastage.

For the frontend, we used HTML to code for the framework and CSS to style the HTML elements of the web application. We then used Flask to link the Python functions to the buttons and search field elements on the HTML website.

Challenges we ran into

Our biggest challenge was setting up the front end of our web-application. Originally, we had decided to use applications that we did not previously have experience with such as React and Flask because there were some benefits to using these applications instead of something else. However, since we did not have any prior experience with these we ran into a lot of errors which caused the website to keep crashing. In the end, we had to restart and recode our entire front end using only HTML and CSS.

Another challenge that we ran into was brainstorming. During our initial brainstorming phase we had a lot of ideas but were unable to think of anything that could realistically be accomplished during the timeframe of the hackathon. Then, we ran into the issue of creativity when we were finally able to think of some projects that could be completed on time. But finally, after spending some time thinking we were finally able to settle on the idea of Eco Eats.

Finally, we also faced the challenge of communication. One of our members had to travel home and therefore we had to communicate online. This made things a bit difficult as it really slowed down the progress because we had to relay things back and forth. There were also times where we weren't able to get in reach with each other because of connectivity issues and whatnot.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Something that we are proud of is that we were able to finally figure out how to set up the front end using only HTML, CSS, Flask and Javascript but still organize the framework in the way that we originally wanted to using React.

What we learned

One thing we learned through creating Eco Eats was how to connect Python with Javascript and CSS through Flask. We also learned how CSS influences HTML and how the frontend works.

Another thing we learned was how perseverance. Unfortunately, we had to restart much of our project on the second day of the hackathon. But we decided to push through and continue working on our website.

What's next for Eco Eats

In the future, we would like to add a lot more functionality to Eco Eats.

Another main feature we would like to add, but were unfortunately not able to complete due to time is a feature that allows the user to select recipes based on the cuisine and find the ingredients that they need to make these recipes. These recipes would all be sustainable and help to reduce food waste because they use ingredients that users may already have at home or that are eco-friendly.

One of the other features we would like to add is a filter that will allow users to filter recipes according to their dietary preferences, restrictions and more in addition to finding the recipes based on the ingredients that they input.

Furthermore, something else we would like to add in the future is something that allows the user to rate the recipes. And using these ratings, we could suggest other users the highest rated recipes. Additionally, we could provide users the ability to suggest their own sustainable and eco-friendly recipes to add to the database for Eco Eats.

Finally, another feature that we plan to add in the future is a tracker that allows the user to track their reduction in waste over time and their overall contribution to minimizing negative environmental impact. This feature would help to motivate users to continue eating sustainably and reduce food waste.