Sustain-a-Share

Inspiration

Social media plays a big role in today's society. Every future generation will grow up with the expectation of social media literacy. As it becomes harder and harder to easily live a sustainable lifestyle, it has become more important than ever to stick with your goals. We looked at other big apps for inspiration. For example, Tik Tok has a feature where you can complete actions to water 'crops' and once the crops are completely watered, Tik Tok will donate food to an organization. This was a big inspiration for our Sustain-a-Tree program.

What it does

Sustain-a-Share is an app that makes living sustainably fun. Users of Sustain-a-Share will have access to a like-minded community of people who are also making strides to live an eco-friendly life. The app is comprised of five main tabs --

Homepage: The homepage is the social tab. This is the area where users can interact with each other. After completing a project, watering the Sustain-a-Tree, or whenever the user has an update they would like to share, the user can post a picture and caption online for others to like and comment on. This will keep users motivated and updated on the friends they've made. The homepage has two sections: a Community tab and a My Friends tab. The My Friends tab shows the user all the recent posts their friends have made so that they can keep themselves updated. The Community tab shows recent and popular posts from users all over the world.

Recycle Scanner: The Recycle Scanner is a tool that can be used to scan the recycle logo on a user's single-use plastic or other recyclable material. The tool will be able to match the symbol found on the object to the proper instructions based on location (not every plastic can be recycled even if it has a recycle logo on it, some counties do not take certain plastics, etc.) using photogrammetry, AI, and user location.

Project Search: The Project Search page is a place where users can look for local volunteer opportunities. For example, if someone wanted to organize a trail cleanup, they could make a post on the Project Search page for other users to find and commit to.

My Map: The Map feature is used to log the locations of all of a user's uploads. This way a user can track their progress and will have a visual reminder of the places they've positively impacted. This will help keeps users motivated and positive. It's always helpful to take a step back and look at how far you've come.

Sustain-a-Tree: The Sustain-a-Tree is an interactive tree that is meant to encourage users to live sustainably by rewarding them for performing sustainable actions. After a user has completed a desired action (ex. recycling, composting, buying a reusable water bottle, etc.), they will have the chance to upload a photo of them completing the action and can water the Sustain-a-Tree with a pre-determined number of drops.

How we built it

We built this prototype using Figma and Scratch.

Challenges we ran into

Due to conflicting schedules, neither of us could work on the project on Sunday. After meeting on Saturday, we brainstormed, worked on, and finished our project in under 24 hours. We had originally planned on making a working prototype of our Recycle Scanner, but after a lot of research, we determined that we did not have the time, resources, or experience to make a satisfactory prototype before Sunday. After we discovered this, we began working on the Sustain-a-Tree prototype instead. We tried making a webpage using HTML, CSS, and JS, but due to time constraints and other technical complications, we changed to Scratch to complete the prototype.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that, together, we were able to create a functional, interactive, professional-looking product using Figma.

What we learned

We learned how to work together and work on a time crunch. We also learned how to use Figma as one of our team members had never used the platform before.