EcoCart

Our Chrome extension aims to provide consumers with a comprehensive and easy-to-understand summary of the environmental impact of their online purchase decisions.

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🌿 Inspiration

Online shopping often overlooks the environmental impact of the products we buy — such as their carbon footprint, sustainability of materials, and ethical sourcing. We wanted to build a simple and intuitive tool that empowers users to make greener choices effortlessly while browsing.

💡 What it does

EcoCart is a Chrome extension that analyzes the sustainability of products while you shop online. It:

  • Estimates carbon footprint using brand and product weight.
  • Evaluates sustainability across Material, Production, Durability, and End-of-life dimensions.
  • Calls OpenAI to generate human-readable sustainability assessments.
  • Suggests greener alternatives using live Bing image/product search.
  • Provides real-time scores and intuitive UI with Earth-themed feedback.

🛠️ How we built it

  • Frontend: React + TypeScript (popup and dashboard)
  • Extension Logic: Manifest V3, content scripts to parse product info
  • Backend AI: OpenAI API (GPT-4) for sustainability analysis
  • Carbon Model: Custom-built calculator using emission intensity data from weights.json
  • Alternatives: Dynamic product scraping using Bing search
  • Design: Earth-themed UX with quadrant breakdowns and animations

🧩 Challenges we ran into

  • Finding reliable DOM selectors across diverse e-commerce sites.
  • Maintaining extension context between navigation and async calls.
  • Designing clean and responsive UI within Chrome extension constraints.
  • Parsing OpenAI responses into structured formats.

🏆 Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Fully functional Chrome extension with integrated AI analysis.
  • Seamless product info extraction from any shopping site.
  • Dynamic suggestion engine for sustainable alternatives.
  • Interactive quadrant design for educating users on impact areas.

📚 What we learned

  • Deep dive into Manifest V3 and Chrome extension internals.
  • Prompt engineering for structured sustainability output from GPT-4.
  • DOM scraping and fallback logic for diverse product pages.
  • UI/UX design principles for extensions (e.g., state persistence, hover behaviors, animation constraints).

🚀 What's next for EcoCart

  • Auto-labeling products with badges (e.g., "Eco-certified", "High Emissions").
  • Crowdsourced product ratings and reviews.
  • Extension sync across devices with user profiles.
  • Expanded support for region-specific sustainability metrics.
  • Partnerships with eco-friendly marketplaces.
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