LeafCart

Inspiration

Today, sustainability data is impossible to track for an average person due to the increasingly busy lifestyles. Unfortunately most people just don’t have the time to research every product before they buy. And honestly it's rather irritating to do so. And we wanted to fix that — by turning sustainability into something you can see, measure, and improve every day. That's why we created LeafCart, a one click research streamlining sustainability tracker.

What it does

LeafCart is an AI-powered sustainability tracking platform that helps users understand the environmental impact of their shopping in a simple, intuitive way. The web app is powered by the Knot API, allowing users to connect their merchant accounts and pull in real purchase/transaction data directly. Every product is analyzed using Google Gemini 2.5 Flash, which performs a deep multi-factor evaluation across materials, packaging, durability, recyclability, and carbon footprint. No endless research. No guesswork. Just smart, actionable sustainability. The AI assigns a 0 - 100 sustainability score, provides clear reasoning, and suggests better eco-friendly alternatives making the entire experience accurate, transparent, and highly personalized. And of course nothing is convincing unless it's rewarding! That's why we included the ability to share your improvements and certificates straight on social media. With this people can confidently express their pride and satisfaction inspiring others to follow suit. As LeafCart we are working to build a community where people can interact to be proactive together!

How we built it/Features

Features:

Sustainability Tracking: Track purchases across 7 major merchants (Amazon, Walmart, Target, DoorDash, Costco, Uber Eats, Instacart)

Product Scoring: Every product scored 0-100 based on 10 sustainability factors

AI Assistant: Google Gemini-powered recommendations for eco-friendly alternatives

Rewards System: Earn coupons and achievements based on your sustainability score

Animated Dashboard: Smooth animations and interactive stats

Social Sharing: Share your sustainability score on social media

Floating Leaves: Interactive background animation that reacts to your cursor

Tech Stack: _Framework: _Next.js 16 with TypeScript

Styling: Tailwind CSS v4

_AI:_Google Gemini AI (gemini-2.5-flash)

API's: Knot's API and mock transaction data

Fonts: Averia Serif Libre Icons/Animations: Lucide React + React Icons, animations via requestAnimationFrame

The platform is built entirely with Next.js 16 (React 19), TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, featuring smooth, GPU-optimized animations via requestAnimationFrame for a polished user experience. Transaction data is processed client-side for instant performance thru Knot API, and the built-in Gemini AI assistant uses the user’s purchase history to deliver context-aware sustainability guidance. It provides intelligent insights and sustainable alternatives for current unsustainable products. It smart scores based on Materials, Packaging, Durability, Recyclability and Carbon Footprint. We have also connect, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Linkden for social media sharing of progress, certificates and achievements. This generates a post pre made for you once you connect your account. Lastly, every time you use and improve your spending choice to be more sustainable we you with reward credits and coupons. Together, these decisions create a fast, scalable, and engaging sustainability companion designed for real-world consumer use.

Challenges we ran into

Integrating multiple APIs in a short time frame was one of our biggest challenges. Getting Knot’s transaction data to align cleanly with our AI analysis pipeline required a lot of debugging and data normalization Designing an intuitive and visually appealing dashboard was another challenge. We wanted to make sustainability fun and engaging, so building smooth animations and interactive visuals that didn’t compromise performance took a fair bit of trial and error.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re incredibly proud that we built a fully functional sustainability tracker from scratch in just 36 hours. From live API integrations to an AI-powered recommendation system, we turned a complex idea into something smooth, simple, and usable. We’re also proud of how we made sustainability shareable. By allowing users to post their achievements and progress directly to social media, we created a way for people to spread awareness and motivate others.

What's next for LeafCart

Next, we plan to scale LeafCart to include a Chrome extension that lets users see a product’s sustainability score while shopping online. We also want to explore partnerships with eco-friendly brands to expand our rewards system and potentially integrate carbon offset programs directly into the platform. Our long-term goal is to make LeafCart a trusted everyday companion for responsible, informed shopping — turning sustainability from a task into a lifestyle.