Inspiration
Our team wanted to build an application with social impact. We believe that change starts within a community, therefore, we brainstormed ways that people can make a change within the local community. We realized that homelessness and food insecurity is a large issue within the Hamilton community, and we thought of ways that people could help reduce this problem. One of our members recalled videos and documentaries online showing supermarkets and restaurants throwing out perfectly good food. Sometimes it would be food which they prepared by mistake, food close to its expiration date, or simply just food with damaged packaging.
1,098+ people in hamilton registered as ‘experiencing homelessness and accessing services’
3000+ people per day experiencing food insecurity per day in hamilton
77% of those experiencing homelessness have smartphones
What it does
We came up with a creative solution, where local businesses (i.e. supermarkets, restaurants, etc) can post perfectly good food or beverages that are still good for consumption, and that would otherwise be thrown out. Those is the local community who need it can then find these places and pick up items. As a result, FoodCycle provides a green solution to reducing food waste while helping those within the local community.
How I built it
- ReactJS
- Javascript
- HTML
- Node.js
- Google maps API
Challenges I ran into
We ran into challenges with some of the Reactjs libraries and with styling of some components. However, we were able to overcome many these problems by finding creative alternatives and solutions.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
We are proud of our application and the idea. We are happy to create a hack that encourages social change and environmental sustainability.
What I learned
Google maps API and ReactJS (many of our members are inexperienced in ReactJS). In fact, this is one of our members' first time coding and hacking - needless to say, he was able to learn a lot!
What's next for FoodCycle
We would like to improve this application by adding more advanced features, such as the ability to find providers in our network by searching a specific food. We would also like to implement a more friendly dashboard for users, and possibly create a native mobile application. Ideally, we would like those in the local community to participate in actively reducing food waste and helping those in need.
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