MinusFootprint: A smart carbon footprint tracker

Minus Footprint is a robust carbon footprint tracker application that has won the SDGO award hosted by Tsinghua University as well as being listed as the Top 30 in China for Microsoft Imagine Cup Jr. 

MinusFootprint is one of my longest persisting projects related to programming. It first began as a community project during Grade 8, while I was studying at Shen Wai International School. It had to relate to a sustainable development goal, and our choice was Goal 13 - Climate Action.

Climate action is essentially taking action to address climate change, and we decided to work towards this goal through reducing carbon footprint.

What is Carbon Footprint?

Carbon footprint is simply the total amount of carbon emissions produced by an individual, or anything - which would become its footprint. By reducing carbon footprint, we are reducing carbon emissions.

Introducing MinusFootprint

MinusFootprint, as the name suggests, aims to reduce your carbon footprint. As a passionate game developer at the time, I had some coding knowledge but have not attempted in developing an app before. So I decided to use this opportunity to challenge myself.

MinusFootprint would be a goal-based app, where users would voluntarily take on challenges that would  reduce their overall carbon emissions. Such as trying to take public transportation for 4 consecutive days. We also developed a ‘smart’ algorithm that analyzes your lifestyle and offers daily tips.

After a lot of work with my teammates Ray and Tony, we were able to deliver the app and publish it onto the App Store.

MinusFootprint, or -Footprint has a vibrant design with easy to navigate features and functions.

Although our community project was complete, I felt this app had the potential to go even farther. Thanks to the support of my design teacher Joanne Anderson, who has given me all the support I needed, we were ready to embark on the next journey.

What's Next?

The Future Civic Award was a competition for Chinese students with the aim of bolstering the SDGOs, hosted by Tsinghua University. We thought our MinusFootprint project was a good fit and submitted it.

It did take a lot more paperwork than expected to present our project, however, we were lucky to receive the Best Prize for our submission.

To me, the prize is an affirmation of the work of me and my team. I did not only stop there.

Going Beyond

We were invited to present our project at the middle school environmental conference in Shekou International School, which was also in Shenzhen. I learnt alot talking to teachers and students from other schools, most importantly, we were able to promote our app!

Microsoft Imagine Cup (Junior)

As time progresses, I also had the opportunity to advance my knowledge in computer science and of course - I became interested in AI. Microsoft Imagine Cup Jr. was a challenge for high school students to build something that could impact the world - using AI. I thought, this was a perfect opportunity to upgrade MinusFootprint with the latest AI technologies.

The question is how?

Rebranding as GreenFootprint, our app aims to use AI technology to make it even easier to track and record your carbon footprint emissions.

Users would be able to scan products they might be purchasing, such as a pack of beef, and our AI system would be able to estimate the size of the beef and deliver a rough estimate on the carbon emissions that was needed to produce this product.

We proposed on working with retail chains to integrated their bar codes into the app, allowing us to tap directly into the supply chains and give a better estimate based on actual data on where and when such produce was made.

We also introduced the Personalizer, which is a data-analysis model that takes in all the user's habits and recorded purchases, and deliver a personalized feed of potential actions that would reduce one's carbon emissions.

For our work, GreenFootprint was nominated as China's Top 30 projects in Microsoft's Imagine Cup Junior challenge.