No Waste Text

Inspiration

Someone's waste is someone's resource!

What it does

Connects businesses and customers to reduce waste using Twilio. Businesses can notify the community about sale offers simply by sending a text message. For example, restaurants can offer reduced prices before it closes for the day; grocery stores can post about cardboard/wood boxes they may be throwing away. Meanwhile, customers can search for these offers within a zip code area that they specify, again, through a text, and receive a text of a list of sale offers and resources giveaway that's available in their area.

How I built it

Using Twilio for sms text messaging and Google Firebase for cloud data storage.

Challenges I ran into

Creating proper connection between Twilio, localhost, and ngrok publicly accessible web. Understanding how Flask works and how to redirect functions in a Flask project.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

What I learned

What's next for No waste Text

Develop a visual recognition system such that it lists out the products within a photo when businesses send photos of offered/on sale products. This will facilitate offer postages by the business. Additionally, a feature that helps customers is in development. We plan to create a system such that the customers sends a list of products and a zip code in order to receive the list of offerings related to those products within the specified zip code. This way, the customers not only have a grocery list available but will also be able to plan which store they may want to go depending on the offers.