LUOJIUzxy / Too-Good-To-Waste

Our Repository for Google Solution Challenge 2024

Too Good To Waste

It seems trivial to throw some rotten food into the trash. But if 7 billions people do it for 365 days, we have a global food waste problem. The UN Environment Programme mentioned in 2021 that the global food waste estimated to contribute in the production of 8-10% preventable global greenhouse gasses [1] . In the same report, they showed that household produces the most food waste compared to food services and retails. This problem calls for immediate solution on food waste prevention considering it costs the global economy more than US$ 1 trillion per year [2] .

Understanding the magnitude of this problem, we introduced Too Good To Waste as a solution that target the most prevalent source of food waste — households. We aim to not only provide a one-time solution on reducing food waste, but also educating our user into a healthy and responsible consumption behavior. We also hope that a better consumption behavior also drives a better production behavior.

Our application has the following features:

• Keep track of pantries
• Notification of expiring items
• Share groceries with other people
• Histories of thrown, shared, and consumed food for motivation and progress tracking
• Points system for motivating user to throw less food
• Automatically scan receipt to import items to database using AI
• Automatically suggest the expiry date based on the category of item using AI

Watch our video on YouTube here. One minute version here.

Architecture

For the system, we use Flutter for our frontend as it offer seamless development for multiple mobile OSes (Android and iOS). This allows us to reach far more users without blowing the development complexities.

As for the backend, we use the Firebase as it has excellent integration with the Flutter system.

Below is the Diagram of the architecture.

Deployment

Firebase

You have to install and configure the Firebase CLI. After that, you just need to run the following command in project root directory.

firebase deploy

Flutter

The flutter code is included in the frontend directory, so make sure to run flutter related commands there. Make sure that you already installed the flutter and configured a virtual device.

1. First install all dependencies with

   flutter pub get

2. Configure the Firebase CLI and Flutterfire CLI by following this tutorial

3. Create a Google Maps Platform API in the Google Cloud and paste the key in the file frontend/android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml for metadata com.google.android.geo.API_KEY

4. Like other usual Flutter applications, you need to run the following command

   flutter run

Screenshots and Demos

• Home page with shared items list

  

• Detailed information about shared item

  

• User shared items

  

• Messaging another user

  

• Notification of soon-expiring item

  

• AI Import (Video)

Vision for the Future

We, the Too Good To Waste Team, believe in a world without food waste. We know, that it is a long shot ahead, but we trust in every little step that we make today towards a better future.

As the next step, we want to integrate with the food banks and other organizations that would benefit from this pantries-sharing system.

We also want to create a gamification system that gives user in-app achievement for their accomplishment in reducing their own food waste.