{Waste Less}

{Waste Less} is the best solution to tackling food waste as a result of being neglected and forgotten! Tracking + Gamification features ensures households build up the good habit of reducing waste!

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Inspiration

Upon doing research, we were saddened to discover that 77% of Singaporeans regularly waste food at home, with a whooping 48% being that households have forgotten about their purchased items - out-of-date food at the back of their fridge because they just can’t see it. Rather than being an issue of a lack of awareness, we believe that non-action is the root of the problem. {Waste Less} was created for households to conveniently track their purchased items nearing expiry so as to minimise wastage. It is important to ensure they regularly visit the app, so as to build up a good habit of using food products properly and shaping a positive attitude towards reducing waste.

What it does

Firstly, "Home" Page is where households can track food items with a swipe of their finger. They are able to view items stored in the various locations (cabinet, fridge etc.) in order of items approaching expiry. A red/amber/green warning light system icon is located next to the items to signal to households which foods should be used soon. Users can find new ways to use the food they already have by browsing through recipes at the click of a button. Tapping on the "+" icon allows users to add items and their quantity. Additionally, "shopping list" box is where users input their purchased products.

Onto the "Stats" Page, where % of food wastage is calculated - using items from "Product History" and subtracting food consumed. Weekly progress is displayed, and households whose progress bar (in yellow) reaches 80% and above are able to collect coins!

Lastly the "Pets" Page is where coins are spent in the store to afford adorable pet icons! Given the massive popularity of collection games of "neko atsume", we believe that this gamification feature can be a huge push to encouraging households to use the app daily. This helps them to build up a regular good habit of minimising waste and thereby achieve our end goal of shaping a positive outlook towards less food wastage among Singaporeans!

How we built it

These are our languages and frameworks: python flask html css bootstrap sqlalchemy wtforms

Challenges we ran into

  1. A lack of time: the 24h deadline was really tight, having to allocate time to brainstorming and creation of the product itself. We made sure to stay on discord calls to ensure progress.
  2. A lack of manpower: As a 2-man team, we had a lot of tasks to complete by ourselves. We did our best to plan efficiently and divide tasks according to our capabilities.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Despite being pre-university students beginning to learn coding less than a month ago, we are proud to have tried to take on this challenge and do our best to create a human-centric product to help better the environment! It's gratifying to realise that we can make small but meaningful changes using coding!

What we learned

A lot definitely! New to the hackathon scene, we enjoyed learning about how it is being run as a whole. From attending workshops and talks to completing the challenge itself, we had the opportunity to glean valuable information from experts, as well as pick ourselves up as we made mistakes.

What's next for {Waste Less}

As we are more familiar with html and css, we have decided to make a web product. However we are hoping that {Waste Less} will be made into an app as intended. This will allow households to access the app more conveniently. Furthermore, we are hoping to add additional features such as scanning bar codes of purchased items on top of existing features of manually keying in details of the product. Reducing time spent on the nitty-gritty details makes the app more appealing! Lastly, we envision for our "Pets" page to be more extensive and feature more adorable pet icons and varying locations as a greater incentive!

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