SustainaBuy - UTMIST 2023

🏆 Winner of Machine Learning Competition Hack the MIST 2023 at the University of Toronto. SustainaBuy is a Chrome extension applies OpenAI Model to analyze the sustainability score of any online product. SustainaBuy also provides detailed analysis, three alternative products, and reward points. SustainaBuy helps hundreds of billions of online consumers to shop better and support environmental health.

Team Members:

Saksham Malik

William Wang

Fugtemypt Zheng

LinJun Zhou

Link

Github Repo: https://github.com/WilliamUW/SustainaBuy

Devpost: https://devpost.com/software/sustainabuy

Demo video: https://youtu.be/Uxa6CTNKi-s

💡 Inspiration

• We all want to be sustainable, but it can be challenging.
• Two major barriers are the time-consuming research required to find sustainable products and the lack of incentives for people to shop sustainably.
• Our team aimed to overcome these obstacles at Hack the MIST for not just us, but the 2.14 billion e-commerce shoppers around the world.

🤖 What It Does

• Say hello to the future of sustainable shopping with SustainaBuy - the tool that helps you find the perfect product for both you and the planet, and rewards you for it! With one click, the extension pop-up automatically fetches and displays product information, eliminating the need for additional research.
• SustainaBuy also incentivizes eco-friendly purchases with credits from sponsors who want to offset their carbon footprint.

👨‍💻 How We Built It

• We used JavaScript to implement the extension's logic and search product webpages for information such as ingredients, manufacturer, packaging, and other relevant details.
• HTML and CSS were used to design the extension's pop-up interface where users can see the product's extracted information and sustainability evaluation score.
• Finally, we employed OpenAI to evaluate the product based on a specified set of parameters to generate an overall sustainability score.

🤯 Challenges We Faced

• We faced challenges in scraping web data due to inconsistencies in the different layouts and field IDs.
• We also encountered issues with the OpenAI API keys, which reset without notice, leading to needless debugging.

😎 Accomplishments We're Proud Of

• Through our work on SustainaBuy, we were able to build an extension that has the potential to make a significant impact on sustainability.
• We're proud of the fact that we were able to create a tool that not only makes it easier for consumers to make environmentally conscious purchasing decisions, but also incentivizes them to do so.
• Additionally, we were able to successfully integrate the OpenAI API, which allowed us to evaluate the sustainability of products based on a specified set of parameters. What We Learned

😃 What We Learned

• One of the biggest challenges we faced while working on SustainaBuy was dealing with the inconsistencies in web data scraping due to different layouts and field IDs.
• However, through trial and error, we were able to develop a system that could reliably extract the relevant information from product web pages.
• We also learned a lot about the OpenAI API and how it can be used to evaluate the sustainability of products.
• Using PostMan API Platform to test our API requests.
• Overall, we learned that building a sustainable shopping tool is a complex task that requires a lot of different skills and expertise.
• However, we also learned that with hard work and collaboration, it's possible to create something that can make a real difference in the world.
• We're excited to continue working on SustainaBuy and to see how it can evolve and grow in the future.

😉 What's Next for SustainaBuy

• We hope to improve SustainaBuy's capabilities by incorporating user feedback and expanding the set of parameters used to evaluate sustainability.
• Our ultimate goal is to create a more sustainable future by encouraging eco-friendly consumer behavior.