Everyone in the world can help stop climate change by reducing their individual carbon footprint. SaveUrPlanet is an app that analyzes your carbon footprint and gives you personalized tips to reduce your impact.
SaveUrPlanet is a web application that automatically calculates your carbon footprint by analyzing your daily activities in the three categories that make up a large part of the individual contribution to carbon emissions – travel, food, and household.
SaveUrPlanet automatically sorts your travel receipts, food receipts, and electricity bills to calculate part of your carbon footprint. The app also allows you take pictures of food to calculate the carbon contribution from your daily diet. Not only does the app track and compare your carbon footprint, it also provides personalized tips based on your activity.
WHY WE ❤ IT
We only have one planet, so any app that helps us preserve it is pretty awesome in our view. We also love that SaveUrPlanet incorporates so many different microservices and APIs in one project. Read more about the project on Devpost.
HOW YOU DO IT
We caught up with Hamid “Muneer” Muneerulhudhakalvathi, graduate student at the University of Texas at Dallas, to talk about his inspiration for SaveUrPlanet.
Clarifai: What inspired your idea for SaveUrPlanet?
Muneer: We were inspired by “Before the Flood,” a documentary by Leonardo Dicaprio. Climate change is one of the most serious issues at present and its impact should be understood by the people. So, we thought we could contribute towards the welfare of society by helping people understand about the seriousness of the issue and unite them using an application.
How did you build the app?
The app was primarily built in NodeJS. We automatically forward the mails containing travel receipts, food receipts and electricity bills from the user to the Sparkpost API using Google Scripts which runs every minute. Sparkpost API dumps the mail into a database. We parse the data from mail using regex and obtain the values of miles traveled, the kind of food ordered and the electricity bills for the month and store it in MongoDB. We also allow users to take pictures of the food and send it to our system. Then use the Clarifai API which helps us to identify the kind of ingredients and calculate the carbon footprint accordingly. Also, we used the Microsoft Cognitive API to convert the electricity bill to get the appropriate values. We then use our algorithm to calculate the carbon footprint and compare it with the national average and depict the results in various graphs. We also send tips to user in order to reduce the carbon emission using the Twilio API based on the user behavior. Twilio, Microsoft Cognitive API, and Clarifai APIs were incorporated using Rapid API.
What was the best part about working with the Clarifai API?
Clarifai was one of the easiest APIs I have worked with. Simple, easy to use and to the point. No learning curve.
Thanks for sharing, Muneer!
To learn more, check out our documentation and sign-up for a free Clarifai account to start using our API – all it takes is three lines of code to get up and running! We’re super excited to share all the cool things built by our developer community, so don’t forget to tweet @Clarifai to show us your apps.
And give Muneer some props in the comments below. Until next time!
