the-vindicators: Climate Shopper

a simple yet powerful tool to support carbon-aware grocery choices.

Inspiration:

Each day, we make grocery choices based on taste and need, but not all of them are sustainable or environmentally friendly. By using this app the user raises awareness towards which products are in season right now and which ones should rather not be consumed daily. The goal is to support carbon-aware decisions before purchase.

Ease of use:

Just point the mobile phone at a consumable good and get instant feedback about the choice you are about to make.

Technology:

The MVP consists of a serverless Android App. The key strength of this application is the presentation of aggregated data from many sources to improve buying choices. The data used was obtained from a big online retailer for groceries, while other information was aggregated by using Wolfram Alpha or bite.ai, for image recognition. The feedback based on the data was derived from various studies published during recent years.

Results:

The app created within these 36 hours is by no means a perfect prototype but a well-elaborated proof of concept. It shows how technology like a mobile phone app can improve our choices by helping us develop an awareness of our carbon dioxide footprint. The global food & grocery sector reached US$8,045 billion in 2017 and this is only an indicator of the impact that rising carbon dioxide awareness can do in this market. By expanding our app to more products like packaged good or meat an even bigger impact can be achieved! Further, the technology can be integrated into customer loyalty reward systems or even connected to personal health tracking.

Built With

• kotlin
• python