Evergreen Connect

What if you could influence people to make sustainable choices? EvergreenConnect is a social platform aiming to helping individuals improve their carbon footprint and motivate others to do the same.

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Inspiration

Habits are hard to change. Some people aren’t incentivized to change their own habits because they feel that it wouldn’t make that much of a difference on the planet anyways; however, entire communities that make sustainable choices together can make a larger impact on the planet.

Social pressure plays a large role in the decisions we make every day and can shape communities. When individuals can see friends’ sustainability scores improving, they will also be motivated to make positive changes.

What it does

We thought that we should have a social network platform that tracks sustainable choices. Our website measures a person’s sustainability score based on their gas, electricity, and water bills. Then, we encourage individuals to share their sustainability scores with their network. We also provide suggestions for how people can improve their carbon footprint.

How we built it

HTML + CSS, javascript Python Numpy

Challenges we ran into

Evolving our idea to address issues with the first iteration of our idea, such as how to make our platform simple to use and which aspects of sustainability to address.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Being able to learn new skills fast Applying principles from psychology/social behavior and game theory to encourage sustainable behavior Making the product easy-to-use by allowing users to upload pictures of their bills instead of individually inputting detailed everyday choices such as when they turn off a light (tedious!) Focusing on user psychology to improve project feasibility and impact

What we learned

Used first principles to deduce why sustainable choices can be difficult to make for self-interested individuals Proposed ideas for counteracting apathy on sustainable choices

What's next for Evergreen Connect

Make an associated mobile app that makes it easier for users to access and input their sustainability information Track additional areas that influence one’s carbon footprint such as automobile usage, airplane travel, recycling efficiency, etc.

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