Recycling Tracker

Home Page
History Page
Goals Page

Inspiration

We were inspired to create a recycling tracker after understanding the immense effect our garbage has on the environment. Recycling plays a major role in our journey to a more sustainable future through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and reducing waste. Recycling starts with consumers, so we decided to create a web app that encourages people to recycle.

What it does

Our website allows users to set goals for how much they want to recycle every day. The site keeps track of how much they have recycled and provides stats on how much they have recycled. The site also contains useful information on items, their impact on the environment, and how they should be responsibly disposed of.

How we built it

The website is built with flask and hosted on Vercel. The frontend is built using HTML, CSS and Javascript. Data is stored on a PostgresSQL database also hosted on Vercel.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into difficulty connecting the backend to frontend using API endpoints. This was a new experience for all of us so it took time to figure out. Compatibility issues also meant that we needed to change SQL databases twice, switching from mySQL to SQLite, then finally to PostgresSQL

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of our ability to communicate and coordinate the project effectively despite being far from one another. We are also proud of our success integrating the frontend with the database, considering that none of us had ever worked with frontend development or SQL databases.

What we learned

We learned a lot about frontend development with HTML, CSS, and Javascript. We also learned how to implement API endpoints through Flask and also work with several SQL databases. We also learned that we cannot always rely on tools being fully compatible with one another (SQLite and Vercel).