PlanetPoints is a platform for people who want to save our planet. On this platform, users can scan products they use in their day-to-day lives to get a sustainability report on that product. This evaluation includes the product's ingredients, the brand's environmental record, and the eco-friendliness of its packaging, empowering users to make planet-positive choices.
The inspiration for this project came from looking to the future. Everywhere we look in recent history, we see pollution, climate change, and the impended point of no return. Instead of talking about the problem, we wanted to actively contribute to being part of the solution.
- PlantPoints - Retrieve a sustainability score from 1 to 100 for products you use
This product allows the user to scan product barcodes they use in their day-to-day lives to get a sustainability score. This score is made up of three factors: brand reputation, materials, and packaging. Using our SustainAScore algorithm, we return a score from 1 to 100 based on how good or bad a given product is for the environment.
- Open App: Use your device's camera to scan the product barcode.
- Scan Product: Get an instant sustainability score on the product.
- Make informed choices: Use that information to choose products that align with your environmental values.
- Contribute to the Community: When you scan a product and nothing comes up? Add it. Add it through our intuitive UI.
- Android application: Android branch
- Web application: PlanetPoints.us
We took a multi-path approach to developing this application.
- Landing Page: Next.js
- Android Application: Kotlin and Android Studio
- Backend: AWS Lambda
- Scanning Functionality: Google Vision and Barcode API
The biggest challenges we faced were the handoff points between teammates and making sure nothing fell between the cracks. Handoffs meaning Lambda to Android Application and Scanning Functionality to AWS and Android Application.
Our biggest accomplishments are honestly all of the technologies we used to make this come together, with everyone having their own strengths and weaknesses and having teammates do what they're comfortable with and use, ending up with an amazing final product.
Increment!!! We started off with an incredibly wide scoped project but from the start, we kept looking at the smallest possible steps we can take to get to a product we can demo and we ended up finishing up with an extremely basic MVP around midnight and that ultimately gave us so much time to polish up and work on documentation and UI/UX.
Hopefully the app store!