Sustain The Way

Our Mission at Sustain the Way

At Sustain the Way, we are committed to reducing food waste and supporting local communities by connecting food pantries with surplus resources. Our platform bridges the gap between farmers with excess food and pantries in need, ensuring better allocation of resources. By simply entering a zip code, users can find local pantries, access their services, and get in touch with them directly. We also provide donors with an easy way to locate nearby pantries and understand their specific needs. Together, we can create a more sustainable and food-secure future.

Inspiration

Hunger and food waste have long been a miss-matching issue that can be solved way easier through appropriate allocation of food. In New Zealand, for example, some innovators have created platforms that allocate the vegetables and fruits that are not up to expectation by looks to customers, fresh out of farm and for a fraction of price. Inspired by that, we want to develop an app that connects farmers to customers in the easiest way, and through food pantry is a really good tool. Food pantry are usually free, so it is also charitable to give back to the community.

This websites goal is to help local food pantries around us. By using your zip code, we are able to cater to the resources around you both as a consumer and producer. We are able to bridge food pantries to farmers who are experiencing food waste so that the resources are being allocated properly. Moreover, the customers are also able to access their local pantries around them with this service being able to get into contact with them.

Donors (usually farmers) can also use this website to see the local pantries around them and view what they may be needing to collect at any given moment bridging the cycle of giving back to our communities.

We created this website using JavaScript, node.js, Html and Css.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into some technical issues while trying to get the API Key of OpenAI to work on multiple computers, as it was working on one but causing errors in the others. It caused a lot of troubleshooting. We had to create another API Key and set up the environment variables in our computer to match with the API Keys. In the end, the problem turned out to be that we exceeded the limit on the daily usage (free-version issue), and we purchased a one-month API Key. Thankfully, it worked out perfectly and rapidly after that.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we pitched an idea that has practical uses of the platform we built. The miss-match in the demand and supply of fresh produces causes huge food waste to occur and connecting relocating the goods to those in needs. We were also able to incorporate AI into the website, feeding it queries and it giving back results to our search.

Users going to our site can search for closest food pantries that the local farmers support.

What we learned

In the process, we learnt about intergrating OpenAI into our website to solve real-world problem, in our cases, connecting farmers directly with food pantries and customers to reduce food waste and build food connections.

We also learnt that coming to hackathons like these can help us expand our knowledge on solving sustainability barriers, getting out of our comfort zone and especially collaborating/delegating tasks with team members to make our work (the website) excecuted effectively.

What's next for SustainTheWay

After the competition, we will complete our intended features, namely checking food pantries in a specific zip code, improving our search engine and modifying any little imperfections about the front-face of the website.

Someday in the future, some of us can go on to develop an actual system of this food allocation and make an impactful cause to people around us. SustainTheWay is the foundation for a bigger cause.