Inspiration
Problem Statement: In 2019, Singapore generated around 744 million kg of food waste. How can we tackle this growing problem and encourage Singaporeans to cut down on unnecessary food waste?
When we heard that Singapore generated 817,000 tonnes of food waste in 2021, a jump from the 665,000 tonnes in 2020, we knew we had to do something. We decided to tap into the strong sense of community prevalent in Singapore and use that to minimize food wastage.
What it does
TradeEats provides a platform for users with food that is about to expire soon, or food that they know they won't be able to consume, to give away this food to those around them. This not only saves food but also strengthens community relations. It builds an atmosphere of generosity and reciprocity as people are more willing to give to others.
We felt this was a more effective way than donating to food charities for the following reasons:
- People are often unaware regarding the food bank locations and where to go to donate the food.
- The actual use of the food is hidden under the veil of abstraction created by the charities, due to which donors aren't able to fully see and appreciate the impact of their benevolent action.
How we built it
We used NextJS and Firebase for our web app.
Challenges we ran into
Being new to NextJS and firebase, a couple of us had to learn along the way. We also faced some challenges pertaining to firebase queries and retrieving data from the firestore.
Towards the end (10 minutes before the deadline), we exceeded our firebase daily quota and our app stopped working. We rushed to create a new database. This is why we have included the new firebase configurations in this devpost.
Also, we wanted to implement the geocode feature (finding distance between two users) but unfortunate their API wasn't working properly :(
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of being able to build a functioning web-app within 24 hours
What we learned
We learned about NextJS and firebase, along with the chakra-ui library.
We also learned (more importantly, ) that software (and more generally, technology) cannot be used to solve everything. Technology is not the panacea to all modern problems.
What's next for TradeEats
We hope to implement the following features for TradeEats in future:
- Distance between users (to allow sorting based on location)
- Chat functionality to allow users to communicate on our app (and hence remove the need for contact details)
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