Squash

Inspiration

While sipping our pop drinks at the event, we were talking about how all these soda cans had "refund where applicable" on their bodies, yet none of us knew where to go to get these refunds. In addition, we also realized how many people in our life don't recycle at all, they simply don't see the point. We wanted to create an app that can help incentive recycling to promote more people to recycle when they can.

What it does

Our idea is to encourage people to recycle their aluminum cans more by providing them with two versatile platforms. This product has two parts, our discord bot can provide information about recycling and sustainability. This can include the locations of the nearest recycling facilities, or what items are accepted in their city's recycling bins. Our web app encourages people to bring their bottles to dedicated drop-off locations, where our staff will bring these bottles in bulk to a facility that will offer refunds. Our users will gain points based on the amount they recycle, which they can redeem for gift cards or discounts to their favorite stores. The web app will also include a map that shows the nearest recycling facility from the location the user enters.

How we built it

Using the React framework we created our website which included a Google Maps API! We also utilized AutoCode and ChatGPT to create our AI-powered Squash Bot which can answer questions regarding recycling and sustainability.

Challenges we ran into

React was challenging to use since all of us either have no experience or are very limited. We got stuck on routing the web pages as well as having issues with general CSS/HTML/Javascript design. Luckily we were able to overcome many of our obstacles when designing our webpage.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

There are so many accomplishments we are proud of! Starting with coding our Discord Bot using Autocode and learning about how to incorporate their platform as well as ChatGPT into our bot. This allowed our bot to generate dynamic responses and was just cool overall! Another accomplishment was the fact that we were able to learn a completely new framework (React) and was actually able to build a function(ish) project.

What we learned

We learned about the importance of time management, our team certainly felt a bit short on time toward the end. We also learned how much fun hackathons are and how much knowledge we learn from just these short 24+ hours.

What's next for GitCats

Unfortunately, we didn't have time to fully implement the map. It doesn't have functionalities, like searching or putting pins on the locations. We also need to finish user-profiles and a user dashboard for them to see their points. We would also like to host our webpage instead of having it only run locally. And of course, establishing the physical system itself, of drop-off locations and related logistics.

Built With

• autocode
• chatgpt
• css
• google-maps
• html5
• javascript
• node.js
• npm
• react