Inspiration
An individual’s carbon emissions are not necessarily the same thing as that person’s carbon footprint, but carbon emissions play a big part. A carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions that come from the production, use, and waste of a product or service. These greenhouse gasses include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gasses. They can have a range of negative effects from depleting our ozone to changing ecological processes, but they are primarily harmful because they absorb radiation which traps heat in our atmosphere. This directly results in poor air quality, global warming, altered weather patterns, and climate changes, all of which have a rippling negative effect on the health of our environment. While there are several greenhouse gasses, roughly 80% of the greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere is carbon dioxide. This is why we focus on carbon emissions (the total amount of CO2 emitted). This is also why often an individual’s carbon footprint will be measured in pounds or metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted (CO2e). In short, carbon emissions are the biggest determinant of both the total amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere and in turn, carbon footprints. While it would be nice if everyone was able to reduce their carbon emissions out of good will, we know this is not feasible nor practical. We understand that individuals need an incentive. The government currently spends nearly $50 billion towards fighting climate change, but through research we have found the most effective way of fighting climate change is by reducing CO2 emissions on a global scale. We envisioned a future in which in order to incentivize individuals to lower their carbon emissions, the government offered tax breaks on those who were able to stay below specific thresholds of carbon emission limits (relative to their location, number of members in a household, and other variables that may play a factor). This would be an optional tax break, similar to being able to write off charity work, but one that we think would have a large effect nonetheless. There are already online calculators that individuals are able to use to estimate their current carbon emissions or carbon footprint. Our app, dubbed “eSaver” uses similar concepts, but instead is a comprehensive service integrated with the IRS that tracks an individual's carbon emissions and displays this data to the user. This will allow them to budget their annual CO2 emissions and strive towards lowering it in order to see a larger tax return later in the year.
What it does
When you open our app it takes you to the home page. Here you can see a status bar of our annual CO2 emissions to date. The home page also includes a pie chart of the users CO2 emissions. The user can navigate to the info page which contains pertinent information about how they can limit their emissions. The annual estimate page allows the user to check their estimate yearly emissions based on simply information like vehicle type, mileage, and home utility usage. The tax form page is a simple form to be sent to the IRS in order to give the user a government funded tax break based on their personal CO2 emissions. The compare page gives the user the ability to determine a specific amount of CO2 emissions for a specific activity or thing such as commuting by bus versus car. Our app is designed to give as much personalized information to the user as possible so they can more readily take up the challenge of reducing their carbon footprint.
How we built it
We built this in Android Studios with Java. This application makes use of the combination of Gradle, XML files, Java components, and various other technologies.
Challenges we ran into
We chose to build this application on the oldest SDK available so that as many people could use it as possible. Because of this, we ran into several issues with deprecated commands and systems, outdated advice, and limited resources for finding solutions to our issues.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of the fact that we were able to produce an actual Android app built with multiple pages and a navigation system within.
What we learned
We have learned how to code with Java for android applications, as well as how to navigate and use Android Studios.
What's next for eSaver
There is still so much more we would love to add to this app and its functionality, including all of the presets we envinsioned in the wire frame, accurate calculations for carbon emissions, and further federal integration. We would love to see a concept like this come to fruition in order to reduce emissions.
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