Green Scanner

Inspiration

We use an app called Yuka to look at how healthy the food I we eat day-today is. Our team was inspired by this to create something similar which informs the user of the environmental impact of the items they choose to consume on a daily basis.

What it does

The website scans a barcode which then sends the barcode to Open Food Facts API then extracts information about the product. We then run our own scoring system based on the extracted information and then return our scoring along with the factors that most influenced that score and the CO2 emission data if documented in the API.

How we built it

The first order was to make sure we could get a barcode scanner working on a locally hosted website. Then, we created the backend that calls Open Food Facts API and runs the information through our scoring algorithm. Finally, we created our (beautiful) frontend that tells the user all this information in an easy to understand way.

Challenges we ran into

The greatest challenge we faced was attempting to push code simultaneously with merges which resulted in our frontend going blank when scanning an item. This occurred right after we had nearly finished the product and took an hour to resolve. This challenge taught us that it's important to work together as a team at all times and make sure different peoples code can work together.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

2/3 of our team members have never attended a hackathon before and had no experience in any development level. We came into this hackathon with the goal of simply being able to pitch something on day two, and we've accomplished far more; our product is something all of us are actually proud of and would genuinely use in our own personal lives.

What we learned

We learned that the most important stage is planning; if the foundation of the idea and how it can be executed isn't solid, the project can't go anywhere. In the future, we would prepare better by laying out a more concrete road map. In the future, we'd also know to never think something is almost done, because unexpected product-breaking bugs can appear at any time. However, we also learned that no matter how hopeless a problem seems, it can be solved, which is a mentality we can apply to our next hackathon and our lives in general.

What's next for Green Scanner

Long term, we would make Green Scanner into a full-scale IOS and Android app, so that users can access the scanner easily. In addition, we would improve search queries from our database/potentially switch so that we can access more information. The main improvement we would love to make is to suggest eco-friendly alternatives to the product scanned to users, so that they can make informed ecologically-responsible decisions right there in the store.