Overview
Every time we use the internet, we increase our digital carbon footprint. Whenever you purchase something online, Watch videos, or use other online products it increases your Carbon footprint. We can reduce the carbon emission caused by different methods. One way is by keeping track of when we use the application and for how long we use it.
I decided to work on Veron as a Hackathon project because I wanted to explore more about how we can change when users use the application and also I wanted to understand more about sustainable software.
About Veron
Veron is an e-commerce platform that rewards users with points whenever they select the products and checkout in 30 minutes when the energy is clean. The rewards then can be used to plant a tree on behalf of the user. The aim of this solution is to create awareness among the users. Because of the rewards system, users will try to shop when carbon Intensity is low, thus reducing their overall carbon footprint.
Why an eCommerce
Ecommerce stores lose $18 billion in sales revenue annually because of cart abandonment. About 69.82% of online shopping carts are abandoned. When we add some gamification to the platform the number of abandoned carts might decrease. In Veron, I wanted to add more gamification and a badge system but due to time constraints, I wasn't able to try out different ideas for adding gamification in the application.
Technology Used
Veron is a web application designed using React, Nodejs, and Mongodb.
To make the decision on the ideal time for shopping for users, Carbon Aware API is used. I calculate the average using
/emissions/average-intensity
and compare it with the latest data available using
/emissions/by-location
So if the current intensity <=average we reward points to the user on checkout. Points are given only to those purchases that are completed in a period of 30 minutes.
(I completed this project in 3 days after my working hours so I wasn't able to complete the features and refactor the code, I will try to update the repository and deploy the code.)
Motivation behind this idea
Ant Financial developed an application that rewards users when they make low-carbon choices, these rewards are then used to plant trees. Ant Financial has funded the planting of more than 120 million trees, covering more than 100,000 hectares with help of this app. You can read more about it here
About Carbon Hack 22
Carbon Hack 22 was organized by Green Software Foundation, where the participants had to leverage the Green Software Foundation’s Carbon Aware SDK/API to create carbon-aware software, or to create enhanced capabilities for the Carbon Aware SDK/API.
What is Green Software Foundation
Green Software Foundation is a non-profit foundation with a vision to Change the culture of building software across the tech industry, so sustainability becomes a core priority to software teams.
Conclusion
It was the first project I build using Carbon Aware SDK, most of my time went into understanding more about green software, the impact of technology on carbon emissions, and how we can reduce it. I look forward to building more green software and understanding more about sustainability. As I have a very basic understanding of sustainable software while working on this project what I did might not be the correct approach to reduce carbon emission, so if you have any suggestions do let me know.
I would recommend everyone read this and try to explore different ways using which we can explore more