EcoBite

The purpose of EcoBite is to empower users with valuable information about the carbon footprint of foods available in grocery stores.

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Inspiration

In one of our past research projects, we examined the impact of the food industry and ultra-processed foods on everyday people's lives. While additives in our daily foods are often discussed, this focuses only on potential individual health effects. We wanted to educate shoppers on the broader ecological consequences of their choices. Our goal was empowering users to make sustainable decisions that benefit the planet's health, contributing to a more sustainable future. We can work collectively towards greater sustainability by considering how our consumption patterns affect the environment.

What it does

EcoBite utilizes barcode reading and product lookup technology to provide users instant access to the carbon footprints of food products. Users can access detailed information about the item's environmental impact by simply uploading an image of the barcode or searching for a product.

How we built it

We built EcoBite using the React framework, which utilizes JS, CSS, HTML, and the Open Food Facts and FoodData Central (US Dept. of Agriculture) APIs.

Challenges we ran into

We face many challenges throughout this project. We initially wanted to utilize natural language processing (NLP) to parse scanned products' ingredient lists and calculate a custom composite score by totaling the ingredients' carbon footprint. However, we could not find a free and robust database that would allow us to do what we had planned. Many of the datasets we found were also not in English or did not contain American food products. Because of this, we pivoted and looked into services similar to EcoBite. That is how we found Open Food Facts, which calculated an EcoScore and the CO2 emission breakdown for products. Another challenge we faced was that we originally wanted to have a barcode scanner, but we were unable to find a high-quality scanner that worked within a web environment; the camera would not focus or would not accurately read the barcode.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we were able to develop a functioning web application that provides users with an EcoScore and a breakdown of a product's environmental impact. We are excited about the application's potential and the impact it might have.

What we learned

Another accomplishment is that we learned more about React, some computer vision, and utilizing APIs. One of us has never worked with React before, so that was a big learning curve we overcame.

What's next for EcoBite

As we move forward, we will work on enhancing the quality and accuracy of our data sources to provide more reliable information in the future. We also plan to enhance our system by introducing an active scanning feature in the near future, which will streamline the process and provide a more efficient and seamless user experience. Additionally, we hope to continually improve the user interface to make the process easier for users.

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