Master Tree

Master Tree is designed to encourage donating even if it seems like a tiny amount. The good that even 30 cents brings into the world needs to be emphasized.

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Inspiration

A few people on the hackathon team used to be pre-med students so volunteering and helping the community were big parts of their lives. A way to help other and the planet would be great to see especially if it were strides made by corporations.

What it does

MasterTree seeks to bridge the gap between the everyday consumer and the need for donations to fight climate change and plant more trees. Each tree costs approximately 2$ to plant, so even small donations can make a difference. Unfortunately, a top motivator for avoiding donation is that people believe that they won’t sufficiently impact the environment with a small amount of money. To solve this, MasterTree’s visuals are here to change that perspective! MasterTree is implemented via a javascript chrome extension which uses the Transaction notification API to recognize whenever a MasterCard member makes a purchase. The Transaction notification API also provides the chrome extension with the purchase amount, so that it can automatically be rounded up to the nearest dollar. Using the Carbon Sequestering Calculator API, the MasterTree extension calculates and visually displays the environmental impact the potential donor will make; some stats included are the grams of Carbon sequestered (from CO2), % contribution to a tree planted, and pounds of food generated. Although the Donate API on MasterCard already has a round-up function, we believe the visual display of the environmental impact will sway potential donors more than simply rounding up to the nearest dollar. MasterTree also has many future development opportunities, such as the creation of a personal donation tracker to display how much an individual MasterCard user has donated totally through the Round Up function. Since many environmental challenges affect communities, in the future we would add a location tracker to our chrome extension and create community goals to tackle community environmental problems.

How we built it

We utilized MasterCard's Transaction Notification API and Priceless Planet Data Services API in conjunction with Google Chrome's Extensions. The transaction notification API was used to signal when a transaction occured and for how much. Our chrome extension consisted an HTML file with a main function.js file that reads the output of the Java file that utilizes both APIs. That information is in the form of a JSON file which can be used to change the DOM.

Challenges we ran into

Since it was most our's first time handling google chrome extensions and APIs, it was a challenge to create a cohesive bridge between the two aspects.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of getting through our first hackathon with a product that we enjoyed making. The learning experience was very insightful.

What we learned

This was the team's first dive into APIs as well as Google Chrome Extensions so we had to learn those.

What's next for Master Tree

We would like to develop more ways to see the user's donation efforts in full force like maybe oxygen produced or wildlife impacts.

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