EcoEarn

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  EcoEarn logo

Inspiration

In today's world, only about 9% of plastics are recycled. One significant reason? People often find recycling inconvenient or not worthwhile. This is especially concerning when you consider the vast amounts of plastic that go to waste daily. With EcoEarn, we aimed to tap into a solution that incentivizes recycling by turning it into an opportunity - not just an obligation. Our inspiration stemmed from a need to empower individuals to recycle more and reshape our collective approach to sustainability.

What it does

EcoEarn is more than just an app – it's a movement to incentivize and reward recycling. Users can post jobs detailing their available recyclable items. Community members, whether high school students in need of volunteer hours or gig workers looking to earn some extra cash, can claim these jobs. The task? Simply take the items to the recycling center, promoting a greener planet, one task at a time.

How we built it

We built EcoEarn using React Native, ensuring that our users can access the platform on-the-go, which aligns with the nature of the app. Backend operations are managed by Firebase and Firestore, while authentication is seamlessly integrated using Google Auth. The Google Maps API further enhances the user experience by providing precise location details for the recycling jobs.

Initially, we grappled with the decision between a web app and mobile application. However, recognizing that our target users would likely be mobile-first, we confidently chose the latter.

Challenges we ran into

The development journey wasn't without its hurdles. A significant challenge arose when we initially integrated Firebase authentication, which allowed for invalid email entries. To rectify this, we migrated to Google Auth, ensuring a more robust and reliable system. As the app grew and more features were added, numerous code refactorings were necessary. Additionally, our vision for EcoEarn was expansive, leading us to frequently re-scope features based on time constraints.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The heart of EcoEarn lies in our innovative points and rewards system. This system doesn't just foster user engagement; it has a direct impact on the planet by promoting recycling. We are immensely proud to have conceptualized a platform that represents a genuine win-win scenario: recycling centers benefit financially, users are rewarded for their eco-friendly endeavors, and most importantly, the planet gets a little cleaner with every completed task.

What we learned

This project was an enlightening journey into the world of recycling and user behavior. We unearthed the myriad reasons people avoid recycling and brainstormed ways to make it more appealing. Technically, we honed our skills in React Native and several Google Cloud tools, expanding our development toolkit.

What's next for EcoEarn

The future is bright for EcoEarn. We're looking to further refine our rewards and penalty system. Our roadmap includes piloting the app in areas like New York and California. In the spirit of collaboration, we're keen on forging partnerships with high schools, local recycling centers, city governments, and nonprofits to bring EcoEarn to as many users as possible, furthering our mission of a greener planet. EcoEarn is very scalable since it is a mobile app and allows anyone to sign up (low barrier for entry.) The go-to-market strategy will be launch the app in the App Store, Google Store, and to make partnerships and deals with recycling facilities, governments, nonprofits and schools, and implement a referral program to get as many users on the platform as possible. We will employ a profit-sharing strategy (for example, each bottle is worth about $0.05 in California. At the conversion rate of 1 point = $0.01, the job claimer gets $0.02, the job poster gets $0.01, and EcoEarn takes $0.02.)

Built With

• firebase
• google-auth
• google-cloud
• google-maps
• react-native