EcoTrace: Transparent Recycling Tracker

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  EcoTrace Dashboard – Waste Tracking Overview

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  Waste Collection Record Management

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  SHA-256 Hash-Chain Verification – Record Integrity Check

Inspiration

Recycling is important for protecting the environment, but it can be difficult to track how much waste is collected and recycled. We wanted to create a simple tool that makes recycling records more transparent and easier to verify.

What It Does

EcoTrace is a web-based recycling tracker that allows users to record waste collections by material type, quantity, location, and recycling status. It displays the total waste recorded, the amount recycled, and the amount awaiting recycling. Users can also export records as JSON.

How We Built It

We built EcoTrace using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The interface is designed to be simple and beginner-friendly. The prototype uses SHA-256 hashing to link each record to the previous record. Its Verify Records feature recalculates hashes and checks the links to help identify changes in the stored records.

Challenges We Faced

As a beginner project, one challenge was creating a useful interface while learning how to handle data and verify record integrity. We also worked on making the application easy to run and accessible through a web browser.

What We Learned

We learned how to build a web application, manage recycling records in the browser, generate SHA-256 hashes, and verify hash-chain links. We also learned how to publish a project using GitHub and GitHub Pages.

What's Next

Future improvements could include a database, user accounts, QR-code-based collection tracking, recycler confirmation, and integration with verified recycling organizations.

Important Limitation

EcoTrace is a prototype. Its hash chain demonstrates record-integrity checking but is not a live blockchain, and it does not independently prove that a recorded collection was physically recycled.

Built With

• css
• github
• html
• javascript
• pages