Shelf Life

Save money, time, and the environment by reducing food waste! Track kitchen items, find recipes for soon-to-expire ingredients, and view your carbon impact—make the most of what you have!"

Comment

Inspiration 🌍

We’re inspired by the challenge of reducing food waste and helping everyone live sustainably—especially on a budget. Our app makes it easy to track what’s in your kitchen and see how small choices impact the environment. With features like recipe suggestions for ingredients you already have, expiration tracking, and a one-tap shopping list, our goal is to help you waste less, save more, and make the most of every ingredient. Let’s make every meal count and take steps toward a greener planet together! 🌱✨

What it Does 🍲

Our app is your kitchen companion, designed to help reduce food waste by tracking inventory, suggesting recipes with ingredients nearing expiration, and giving you insights on each item’s carbon footprint. You can also use the built-in shopping list to track and restock items easily, making sustainable food management simple and budget-friendly.

How We Built It 🛠️

Built in just 2 days for TrentHacks 2024, we developed the app with React, Node.js, Express, and MongoDB. We integrated several APIs to enhance functionality:

  • Gemini API: Provides expiration data and generates recipe suggestions.
  • Open Food Facts API: Retrieves food item details via barcode/UPC codes.

Challenges We Faced 🚧

Our biggest challenge was working with new technologies within a tight timeline, which made it difficult to ensure all test cases passed. Additionally, estimating task completion time proved challenging due to our inexperience with some of these tools.

Accomplishments That We're Proud Of 🏆

We’re proud to have created this project within the given timeline, solving numerous bugs along the way. Building this app from the ground up in a hackathon setting was a rewarding experience!

What We Learned 📚

We learned the importance of determination, teamwork, and effective communication to achieve our goals. Working together cohesively, we tackled each challenge, gaining insights into version control and the impact of scope creep on project timelines.

What's Next for Shelf Life 🚀

We plan to refine our app and add the features we envisioned but didn’t have time to complete. Upcoming features include:

  • Food Donations: Locate donation banks and services nearby.
  • Profile Statistics: Track total money saved, carbon footprint reduced, items donated, and more.
  • Multi-Add to Kitchen: Quickly add items by scanning a grocery receipt.

Thank you for checking out our app! We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed creating it! 🌎

Built With

Share this project:

Updates