EcoStart

EcoStart is an initiative to raise awareness toward various environmental issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, air pollution, ocean pollution, and plastic pollution.

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Inspiration

It all began with a couple of friends who took EOS103, Climate Change, here at Duke University. The facts were alarming. We were intrigued and set out to learn more about how we may be negatively impacting our environment.

What it does

This website is a platform for individuals to learn more about the environment and ways they may help lessen their carbon footprint. The site offers recent news on various environmental issues by using a news media API that is updated constantly. Additionally, users are offered the chance to create an account and post on various issues surrounding the environment. They may look at the posts of reputable figures on a specific environmental issue and become more educated. Additionally, users have the opportunity to find initiatives in their local area to contribute to a more sustainable environment.

How we built it

We built this app using JavaScript (React.JS), HTML, CSS, Supabase, and Figma.

Challenges we ran into

A challenge we faced was with the news media API. The API developer plan had a limit on requests that we soon ran out of. Additionally, we were only granted access to data within the past month. Another challenge that we ran into was ensuring the site's responsiveness.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the progress we've made on the site given the short timeframe we had. We created a back end for user account creation and post creation to allow users to interact and collaborate on various environmental issues which given the short time frame was an achievement. Jaelyn, one of the group members was new to working with React.js, but was able to connect the news media API to our app using React.js fetch calls. Overall, we are very proud of this site and will continue to grow it.

What we learned

We learned that making a full-stack application can take some time and requires careful planning, but can be worth it if you do it with a purpose.

What's next for EcoStart

We plan to make the site more responsive and user accessible. We also plan to either find a new API or find a way to fund the paid subscription version to give more functionality to users when looking through environmental news such as filtering by a specific environmental issue. Additionally, we plan to add more account features such as the ability to like posts and follow others.

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