Why did the chicken cross the globe?

Quantifying effects of reducing food miles and recommending recipes to use leftover ingredients. We provide an interactive platform to augment global efforts to improve sustainability.

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Inspiration

As a team of students, we all are highly aware of local sustainability issues and the macro effects of climate change, and this prompted discussions about how we can help others to reduce their food miles and achieve greater sustainability. Influenced by the decisions we make at meal times and when food shopping, as well as recent events at COP27, we were inspired to construct a solution to help people make better choices.

What it does

Our website:

  • suggests recipes based on given ingredients
  • displays detailed comparative information on Carbon emission levels and land use globally
  • provides advice on reducing food miles
  • continuously tracks a profile user's progress

How we built it

After brainstorming ideas, we distributed tasks amongst our team based on prior skillsets and what we all wanted to learn. Throughout the project, we used BeautifulSoup, R, Python, Plotly, Flask, JavaScript, CSS, Pandas and HTML.

Challenges we ran into

Our main challenge we encountered was finding complete and compatible datasets, however we supported each other to overcome this. Hurdles reached with new technology such as our Google Cloud implementation which we had to abandon due to time constraints. Using R and Python to manipulate the data dynamically for the website.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Building a database by automatically scraping a website and mapping it with datasets. Building a website with authentication and a flask backend. Integrating Techniques over several languages including R built graphs. Learning new python libraries and techniques, as well as javascript and HTML. And our domain name!

What we learned

All members of our team used new technology and digital systems by leaning on eachothers' experiences.

What's next for Why did the chicken cross the globe?

Expanding our database to use a far larger pool of ingredients possibly from other websites. Converting our largely csv- and json-based datasets into an SQL database for more fluid manipulations. Implementing dynamically generated graphs in our website. Improving our tracking of customers green history to better inform them. Getting our software up and running in google cloud.

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