-
-
Logo
Inspiration
Annually, one-third of the world's food meant for human consumption goes to waste. Shockingly, despite this, 720 million people grapple with hunger. Recognizing the potential impact of redirecting surplus food to those in need, we created a platform—a larger scale of the community pantry concept. Here, individuals can contribute unwanted food to those facing hunger. After all, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Our mission is to bridge the gap between surplus and scarcity, benefiting both society and the environment.
What it does
Our aim with SustainEats is to tackle the problem with food waste by creating a platform where individuals can share surplus food they can't use but is still in a good condition. With this platform, you can get food items from the community, and also give food items to the community.
How we built it
To make it work better, we added JavaScript. With some help from mentors and online tools like ChatGPT, StackOverflow and Google, we combined different parts of our project. Plus, to work on the project together easily, we used GitHub. This way, we made sure our website is both cool-looking and is functional.
Challenges we ran into
Thinking of a way to coordinate pickups between donors and receivers was challenging, so we thought of integrating the Calendly platform to coordinate the time, and so the receivers also get an email to be reminded to collect the items.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
In the journey of creating SustainEats, we're extremely proud that our platform can be used in contributing to reducing food wastage by connecting surplus food items with individuals who can use them. The amount of food saved from going to waste would have been substantial, leading to tangible environmental benefits. Lastly, we are really proud that we managed to collaborate despite not knowing each other beforehand. We also capitalized on each other’s strengths and pulled together a solid project in just 12 hours.
What we learned
We learned how to create an app from scratch using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. While it was a stressful 12 hours, we encountered major problems but were able to create a functioning prototype by overcoming our struggles. We learned how to work as a team and figure out how we learn best as individuals.
What's next for SustainEats
There are many functionalities that we wish to add to SustainEats. A possible expansion that would support the goal of SustainEats would be a chat system to be able to message any “buyers” or original posters of the food item. This would encourage integrity to stay true to the goal of providing free, clean food items to those who may not have the funds to purchase items for full price, and decrease waste in general. Another expansion we wish to add would be a better photo system, where posters can include multiple photos of their item.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.