Footprint

Inspiration

In a world that is rapidly evolving and more interconnected than ever, the critical dimensions of environmental health and sustainability sometimes take a backseat to personal convenience and consumerism. Our team came up with Footprint when contemplating the daily activities that significantly impact our carbon footprint. Among them, online shopping and its wastefulness continually resurfaced as a pivotal contributor. Our research unveiled important insights – each product, on average, results in carbon emissions amounting to 6.3 times its own weight, while 90% of emissions from fossil fuel companies trace back to the production of fossil fuel-based products. Despite these revelations, when it comes to shopping, accessing information about a product's sustainability and its potential environmental impact remains an elusive pursuit that we seek to solve.

What it does

Footprint is a browser-based digital ecosystem designed to empower environmentally-conscious consumers in their quest to amplify sustainability efforts. Leveraging the power of Footprint's Google Chrome extension, users gain an invaluable vantage point to gauge the Sustainability Score of product listings on Amazon, thereby providing an additional layer of informed decision-making when selecting products. The Sustainability Score is the culmination of an algorithm developed by us, drawing from a dataset spanning research papers and government standards on carbon dioxide emissions and carbon footprints.

How we built it

We built Footprint using JavaScript, TypeScript, and Python, with some HTML and CSS. The database was created using MongoDB.

Challenges we ran into

One major challenge we ran into was figuring out a method of calculating the Sustainability Score for a product based on available data. The original plan was to calculate the carbon footprint of ordering a product, but many of the parameters needed to do so were not available on Amazon product listings (and the shipping details are left unknown until the order is placed). To solve this problem, we pivoted to creating a custom metric based on sustainability and emissions studies and standards. We ran into several problems while building the Chrome Extension as well, but the most difficult one to handle was figuring out a way to efficiently calculate the Sustainability Score without performing activities that are unable to be performed by Google Chrome.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud that we were able to get the Chrome extension integrated with the API, allowing us to effectively scrape the Amazon page of a product the user wants to buy and store the data from it on command. We’re also proud that we were able to use metrics and measurements from well known research institutions and government organizations to put together an algorithm that effectively rates the sustainability of product listings.

What we learned

We learned how to program Google Chrome extensions, and differences between versions of manifest.

What's next for Footprint

We would like to expand Footprint’s compatibility to work with more online shopping websites such as Walmart, Target, Ebay, etc. In addition we would like to create an app for IOS and Android that would help users shop more sustainability in person. The app would allow the user to take a picture of the product or scan the barcode and would use Image recognition to identify the product and then generate a sustainability report.