EcoTracker

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Inspiration

In our increasingly digital and fast-paced world, many of us have lost touch with the simple joy and fulfillment that come from being in nature. Research from the Mental Health Foundation shows that 44% of people feel less anxious or worried when spending time outdoors, highlighting nature’s powerful potential to reduce stress and anxiety. Yet, despite these benefits, we’re spending more time indoors and missing out on the adventure, relaxation, and purpose that nature can bring.

EcoTracker is built to inspire a spirit of adventure and exploration, encouraging users to reconnect with nature in meaningful ways. Through eco-friendly missions like tree planting, recycling, and water conservation efforts, EcoTracker brings purpose to every hike, turning simple outdoor activities into impactful actions for the environment. By adding rewarding seasonal challenges, the app transforms every walk, hike, or camping trip into an opportunity to contribute positively to the planet. Whether it’s tackling eco-goals inspired by local ecosystems or participating in conservation tasks, EcoTracker helps users make each adventure meaningful, rewarding them as they create a lasting impact on Mother Nature.

What it does

EcoTracker is a gamified mobile application designed to encourage sustainable practices through fun challenges and rewards, providing interactive experience that combines environmental education with fun, actionable steps toward sustainability:

Fun challenges and rewards: Users can participate in eco-friendly activities, submit photos for validation, earn points that contribute to impact badges. Eco tracker also provide a community for user to compete their contributions reflecting upon their status
Diverse activities elements: From simple activities from talking a walk in nature to community-based efforts like recycling, conserving water, and planting trees, EcoTracker provides a wide range of options that make it easy for anyone to participate in sustainability
Refreshing Interfaces: With a nature-inspired, green, and relaxing design, EcoTracker’s interface reinforces our vision of reconnecting people with the environment and motivates users to adopt eco-friendly habits.

How we built it

We began by drafting a solution to what we think is an ongoing ecological issue. A platform that incentives users to engage in eco friendly activities such as recycling, tree planting, and waste management by gamifying the app experience. With the help of Gemini 1.5 api, we were able to validate the authenticity of images uploaded by users to determine if it fits into one of our categories we defined using certain keywords. These are then used to create a variety of game like features such as leaderboards and activity feeds.

Challenges

For us the problem that we struggle with the most is structuring the logic of image verification through the categories for rewarding points. Next was utilizing the version control system. We ran into a lot of unexpected merge conflicts, outdated dependencies and errors. We were able to learn a lot from this experience and at the end we were able to get on the same page despite the agonizing pain of debugging.

Accomplishments

We’re thrilled to have developed a platform that not only rewards and motivates eco-friendly actions but also creates a meaningful contribution to the environment. By encouraging small, consistent actions from a broad community of users, EcoTracker supports positive environmental impact on a larger scale. Through image classification technology, we verify activity submissions, track achievements, and allow users to earn badges as they make eco-conscious choices. Real-time updates on sustainable activities in the community feed further reinforce a collective commitment to explore, preserve and nurture our planet.

What we learned

Through this project, we learned how to effectively integrate Firebase for real-time data updates and authentication, streamline image classification with machine learning for eco-friendly activity verification, and build a user-friendly interface with React Native. Additionally, we gained valuable experience in managing app performance, handling media permissions, and ensuring smooth user experiences, while understanding the importance of motivating sustainable behaviors through feed.

What's next for EcoTracker

For the future of EcoTracker, we plan to enhance the leaderboard by introducing regional challenges to foster stronger local community engagement and encourage friendly competition. We’ll expand our eco-friendly activity categories to offer more diverse options for users to contribute, and we’ll refine our image classification model to recognize a broader range of sustainable actions accurately. Additionally, we aim to introduce personalized sustainability tips tailored to each user’s activity history, motivating them to continue making positive environmental impacts. We’re also excited to develop a location-based recommendation agent that suggests nearby eco-friendly activities and conservation sites, empowering users to streamline their own adventure journey as well as sustainability efforts anytime, anywhere.