EcoChange

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  Landing Page

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  Home Page

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  Why Us

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  Campaigns

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  Finance

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  Account Creation

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  Extension

Inspiration

After noticing the number of people who donated to charities when approached by someone, we realized that the reason people don’t donate more isn’t because they aren’t willing to, but because it is simply too inconvenient to find a trustworthy charity and go through the lengthy steps to donate. When one is approached with a straightforward, simple method to give to a good cause, almost everyone has a few cents to spare. Combining that with our own little pet peeve of seeing an ‘ugly number’ when looking at our purchases, we came up with EcoChange.

What it does

EcoChange partners itself with various e-commerce companies to give a simple and straightforward way to donate on every online purchase. By using a browser extension that detects purchases on partnered stores, EcoChange rounds up the amount due in order to make a more convenient purchase and uses the spare change to support tree planting campaigns around the world.

How we built it

After completing the important step of finding other foundations and campaigns around the world in reforestation efforts, we then researched on the biggest virtual stores domestically and internationally to reach the widest range of audiences. Then it was just a matter of making our website as reliable, secure and transparent as possible. We used Typedream to build our website and integrate other plugins like amCharts and Lottie to bring interactivity to our site.

What we learned & Challenges we faced

As proud as we are of the EcoChange website, it is far from complete; not to mention the browser extension meant to serve as the backbone of our system. Going through this hackathon, we were reminded of just how important time is to the process of creating new systems. Lacking preparation and knowledge for certain parts of web development was definitely a huge road bump. We were restricted to no-code systems provided to us by Typedream that we had to work around and customize to suit our needs, which was a very enriching experience.

What's next for EcoChange

We hope to be able to further develop EcoChange not only for browsers but also to expand towards mobile application development to broaden our market. Secondly, we plan to create a more extensive account page for users so that they can better understand their own impact. Lastly, creating a system that allows users to be able to calculate their carbon footprint (Even just an estimate of it) is definitely on our to-do list.

Built With

• amcharts
• lottie
• typedream