GreenKnowledge

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Inspiration

Carbon footprint calculators are amazing indicators as to where you stand in terms of emissions, and there are other resources to tackle other aspects of sustainability. However, they are quite limited, as they don’t usually provide next steps to take. We wanted to create an all-in-one “kit” that gives you an arbitrary score based on every aspect of sustainability and environmental impact, without you having to manually go to a multitude of different sites to get an idea of where you stand.

What it does

GreenKnowledge is an application that calculates a user’s environmental impact based on a survey. It outputs this information through GreenScore, as well as links for users to further improve their environmental impact.

How we built it

We used Replit’s website hosting features along with Flask and Python to create this. The reason why we used Python in addition to writing HTML, CSS, and JS is because Python enabled us to view the status of loading various resources along with timestamps directly in the console, so we could see, for example, whether an image was loading or not. For the CSS we used Bootstrap, which is a library that gives access to a whole bunch of styles. We used JS to calculate the score and display it to the users, along with links.

Challenges we ran into

We initially tried to get the HTML form data in Python using Flask, but that was changing the way other elements in the code worked - so we stuck to Python just for the hosting and switched to JS to get the form data.

We wanted to style the HTML page that was created by the JS once the form was submitted using Bootstrap, which wasn’t working properly with the separate JS page. Instead, we embedded the JS within the HTML using the script tags and did the same for CSS to maintain consistency.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

One of the biggest accomplishments we had in this project was getting the HTML, CSS and JS to integrate with Python and Flask successfully. This allowed us to expand each of the separate elements of this project a little more without having to worry about the core functionality being negatively impacted.

What we learned

Throughout the course of this project, we were able to learn many new skills. We explored the use of Flask to develop web applications, along with HTML and Python to output the errors/status of various executions. In addition, I learned how to use Bootstrap in accordance with Javascript to style pages written in both HTML and Javascript.

Finally, we learned the importance of collaboration, and how every member of a team has their own role to play in the success of a project.

What's next for GreenKnowledge

What we created in the course of this project is almost like a boilerplate, or template to expand upon in the future. With a few questions on the survey only, this project was created to demonstrate functionality as compared to extreme refinements/detailed expansions.

In the future, we hope to add more survey questions, optimize/revise the algorithm to calculate the score, and use advanced CSS and JS for transitions/animations. We also want to add more detailed and customized feedback for users in the future.