Winners Announcement: Hack@CEWIT 2023

Devpost | GitHub

Waste not, want not. Reducing food waste one meal at a time.

Uniting people who have food to donate, people who are in need of food, and people who want to help deliver food.

Prizes

  • AI Mastermind
  • Climate Action Hero
  • HealthTech Hero
  • Hacking Hero

Inspiration

Food waste is a global issues that costs the world billions of dollars and contributes to food insecurity and climate change.

  • Over 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted each year, which is enough to feed 3 billion people.
  • 40% of food is wasted in the United States.
  • Third largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.
    • One of the largest contributors to methane emissions, which is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

While everyone eats food multiple times a day, many people are still going hungry. In the United States, 1 in 8 people are food insecure, which means they don’t have enough food to live a healthy life. Globally, this number is much higher and is expected to increase as the world’s population grows.

What it does

WasteNot primarily allows users with extra food to offer others to collect it and deliver it to food banks or to one’s in need. WasteNot relies on the community to offer and deliver food. We believe food is a fundamental right and that everyone should have equitable access to food and WasteNot works on that model to increase accessibility to healthy and sustainable sources of nutrition.

It is worthy to note that food isn’t just restricted to be donated. Anyone can find excess food nearby and offer to pick it up. This allows to systematically reduce food waste while also conventional notions.

How we built it

Python Flask backend with React-Native frontend.

Challenges we ran into

Who doesn’t love a good challenge? We had a lot of fun working on this project and we learned a lot along the way.

Accomplishments that we’re proud of

Finishing the project!

  • We were able to get a working prototype of the app up and running in a short amount of time (~40 hours).
  • We were able to develop a microservice architecture for the backend and build a mobile app asynchronously but have them work together seamlessly.

What we learned

  1. Teamwork and communication are key to success.
  2. There is always room for improvement and growth.
  3. It’s okay to fail, as long as you learn from it.

What’s next for WasteNot

  • Adding more features to the app
    • Reward system for people who donate food
    • Map to show where food is being donated
    • Resources for people to reduce food waste
  • Implementing a more robust backend
  • Creating a more user-friendly UI/UX