Ecoswap - Greener Shopping Alternatives

Ecoswap is a browser extension that shows greener alternatives to the product you're looking at.

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Inspiration

We want to make greener shopping intuitive and seamless. By using a browser extension as a medium, we surface product alternatives that support Circular Economy as the user is browsing on their usual favourite online stores.

The Circular Economy principles we utilise in this product are: the power of inner circle (promoting local stores #HelpingBritainRecover) and the power of circling longer (reusing a second-hand products rather than buying a new one).

What it does

The browser extension is activated when you're looking at clothing, furniture, and electronic products. It will surface you with greener alternatives:

  • Second-hand products
  • Buying from a local shop
  • Buying from a sustainable shop

When a user clicks to buy second-hand products on eBay or Depop, we will track the conversion and earn money from affiliates' programmes.

How we built it

Research and Ideation We started off by ensuring we had a common understanding of Circular Economy and the hackathon brief. We incorporated the nudge theory into the concept of our product. Nudge is a behavioural science concept to positively reinforce and influence human behaviours based on 4 principles: Provide a reason to change, Show alternative behaviours, Provide opportunities to practice new behaviours, Give regular feedback. We brainstormed examples of circular economy, the impact across various industries and then took some time to research on the ideas that interested us as team

  • Take back packaging schemes
  • Utilising food space
  • Office space sharing
  • A tool to surface better shopping alternatives

We landed on creating a tool to surface better shopping alternatives. We could all relate to the idea of wanting to make an impact but being lazy and were shocked by some of the figures we found during research.

The Tech Stack We will use web scraping to extract the product description. We will use eBay's browse API to search for the product. eBay's fieldgroups parameter allows us to filter by colour, brand, condition, category, etc. For second-hand websites that do not have their own API we can use web scraping to find the products. For our local alternatives, we will be using Google Maps API.

Challenges we ran into

Deciding on what the extension can and cannot do. We had a bunch of ideas but 1) we didn't want to bloat the product and 2) we needed to be aware of the technical limitations.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creating a prototype that looks snazzy in such a short period of time.

What we learned

To offset the carbon emission of buying 10 pcs of clothes, you need a forest ~10x as big as your London flat. Crazy.

What's next for Ecoswap - Greener Shopping Alternatives

  • Vertical expansion: We want to expand the current model to include grocery shopping, travels, etc
  • Gamification: Generating points that can be used to further offset your carbon footprint and collect rewards e.g. planting a tree, donating to a charity of the user's choice, sponsoring an animal that's at risk, collect achievement badges.
  • North star: We want to create a Carbon Wallet where users can set goals and budget for their own carbon emissions with active support from Ecoswap

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