Trash2Treasure

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Inspiration

On one hand, big companies often create excess items that end up going to landfills and polluting the environment, ultimately contributing to high levels of carbon emissions. On the other hand, small businesses often struggle to operate sustainably due to eco-friendly options being much more expensive than other alternatives. Trash2Treasure seeks to address both of these issues by creating a community that promotes the values of reduce, reuse, recycle.

What it does

Trash2Treasure is a local waste marketplace where businesses big and small can sell surplus materials (think: old laptops, steel, yarn, lumber, you name it!) for small companies to purchase at a discount price and repurpose it.

Trash2Treasure’s main features consist of:

A dashboard where companies can view their own personal listings and requests for materials
A page to view all available listings and make requests to buy from companies
A page for companies to create their own listings by uploading items manually or through a .csv

Notable additions:

System that reports to the users how much money and carbon emissions they save
Email notifications sent to both the requester (buyer) and company (seller) once a company accepts a request.

How we built it

Frontend: Next.js, tailwind css, react, typescript
Backend: Firebase: database + auth, pricesAPI: returns market price for materials, Resend API: email notifications

Challenges we ran into

We wanted to use a carbon emissions API to calculate how much CO2 all users save by buying/selling the product instead of throwing it away. However, as we researched possible APIs we reached multiple paywalls that would limit our operations. Instead, we manually calculated items based on factors such as quantity, category, etc.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were really excited to build this. When we were in the planning phase, we put a lot of effort into looking into how we could redirect waste disposal to a good cause.
From considering edge cases to planning out user flows, we had so much fun mapping out what Trash2Treasure would look like and what it could become.
At the very beginning, we were worried that the task would be too much for so little time, but we supported each other every step of the way.
We’re happy to say that we’ve worked hard to make something we can be proud of!