Greenify

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  1 - Welcome Screen

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  2 - Bottle Selection Menu

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  3 - Bottle Count Selector

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  4 - Confirmation

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  5 - Menu for Leaderboards, Coupons and Exit

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  6 - The Leaderboard

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  7 - Coupon Purchase Confirmation

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  8 - End Screen

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  9 - A full run in the terminal based text program

Inspiration

For our product Greenify, we took inspiration from the German bottle recycling system found in many stores in Germany. The process works by placing electronic recycling booths in stores where people can submit their used beverage containers like glass bottles and steel cans in return for money. We tried to make this system more accessible and fun through Gamifying it by introducing points, leaderboards, and coupon redeeming options, which can be implemented in any country around the world regardless of socio-economic status. The points earned from this recycling process can then be used to redeem vouchers which you can use in your next purchase from supported stores.

What it does

Greenify is a booth programmed to accept plastic bottles from people and reward people with virtual points. The credit points earned from this recycling process can then be used to redeem vouchers which you can use in your next purchase.

The following are the steps in the process:

1. At first, the user is prompted for their unique 6-digit ID number and 4-digit PIN for identification. Then, the user has to select the size and number of the bottles or skip this stage.
2. Afterwards, the user will go to the menu where they can view leaderboards, purchase coupons or exit the system.
3. The leaderboard shows the top 10 contributors. And the user can get 5$ shopping coupons by spending 1000 points.

How we built it

We built the back end of the software used by the Greenify system using the Java programming language implementing advanced input validations, File I/O and navigation options.

Challenges we ran into

Due to time constraints, and more importantly, the fact that we are absolute beginner programmers, we weren’t able to integrate a GUI for our program which we wrote in Java programming language. We couldn’t implement JavaFX as the GUI (even though it was initially planned) because we weren’t confident whether we could complete the project in time, and so we improvised by making an animation that illustrates the user interface of Greenify using Adobe After Effects, which is presented in our demo video.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

First and foremost, we are proud of our team effort. We take pride in the fact that even though our team members individually aren’t that experienced with the different types of work that went into completing this project, our collaboration made the project possible for us.

This was our first-ever participation in any Hackathon, and we found it extremely amazing. The experience we gathered by participating in this Hackathon and working on a project collaboratively with a strict time constraint is a lifetime experience and it will continue to inspire us to participate in more competitions in the future.

What we learned

Collaboration and teamwork is the prime factor when working on something as a team, and this project has helped us polish our skills in this regard. Besides, at any stage of development, if there is any difficult or unavoidable circumstance, we should try to improvise and adapt to overcome such difficulties.

And last but not least, if we have any idea in mind, and if we get the right guidance and motivation and research about what we will be doing, anything can be turned into a reality.

What's next for Greenify

The version of Greenify we have submitted is the MVP (Minimum Viable Product), meaning it is just a workable version of our product to satisfy the initial users. But for our beloved project, Greenify, we have the following plans which are to be done in the future:

1. Implement a user-friendly GUI which is similar to what is presented in the demo video (or better).
2. Develop a server/database system that could store information about the users and global leaderboards.
3. Implement additional functionalities so that Greenify can support recycling other types of recyclable products.
4. Improvise the scoring and leaderboard system and provide more options in the reward system.

Built With

• java