EcoPocket

We make helping the environment fun and donating to charity free.

Our solution is EcoPocket. EcoPocket is an app that gamifies helping the environment by awarding points for completing eco-friendly challenges. For example, bringing reusable cutlery to work/school. Users will be required to submit proof of completing the challenge in order to gain the points. Depending on the effort and impact of a challenge, users will receive an according amount of points.

We have sustainable businesses that we partnered with so that users can visit eco-friendly stores, cashiers can scan the user’s points card and the user will gain a certain amount of points depending on the amount they spent. Once users have collected points on the app, they will be able to donate the points to one of the preselected environmental non-profit organizations. At the end of the month, the charity with the most points given to it will receive a donation of 20% of our net profits of the month.

This allows users to support environmental organizations without having to spend money. EcoPocket is created using Thunkable and it has outsourced data tables on Airtable. It will be available on both the Apple Store and Google Play.

The problem we have chosen to focus on is climate change, although it is not solvable with one app, EcoPocket offers an innovative solution that helps fight this complex issue. The environmental crisis is huge, it affects everyone and it is such an integral part of our future. The problem reaches us all and there are many impacts that can be observed in our city of Montreal. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency “human activities currently release over 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year”.

The factors contributing to this issue are pollution, such as transportation, production and disposal of garbage, mass production and excessive packaging. All sectors of development impact this problem. Transport, industry, the food industry and electricity production are leading producers of carbon dioxide. This leads to warmer summers with heatwaves, warmer winters with less snow and intense storms.

Our winters in Montreal are progressively getting warmer. According to the government of Canada website, the average temperature in December 2009 was -8˚C and it has since decreased to -3.6˚C in December 2021. Although this might not seem like much, if it continues to progress in this way there will be devastating consequences to our city.

Our target population is teenagers and young adults because many people in this demographic are interested in the environmental crisis, as it directly impacts our entire future. We will specifically target people between the ages of 15-25. Our target market is people with at least a medium-income as some of our challenges rely on the fact that our users purchase products at our partnered businesses. However, users can use the app without needing to complete those challenges. 

While we will eventually expand to other locations, our app is currently directed towards Montreal residents only. We will target people who are at least a little aware of the severity of the problem we are facing and are interested in being part of the solution to help the earth.

The environmental crisis will have some of the biggest impacts on teenagers and young adults as they have grown up with the climate crisis being an important concern and they will have to fight for the earth for most of their lives. Unfortunately, not enough is being done to improve the situation. EcoPocket is our way of encouraging everyone, but especially teenagers and young adults, to be more eco-conscious. This is done by challenging users to complete challenges that promote sustainable actions. Our app shows the direct positive impact small sustainable actions can have on the environment by rewarding the continual effort made by our users to reduce their impact on the environment.

Since we are already part of the target market that we are focusing on, we know a lot more about our target population. As well, we have taken many opportunities to connect with others from our target demographic and get their opinions on our solution. We started our project by coming up with several topics that we thought were important and had our classmates, who are part of our target market, choose which problems were most important to them. This allowed us to see that the climate crisis and EcoPocket are just as important to our target audience as they are to us. 

In addition, we are currently participating in the Voices of Olympia Canada competition, where our team is working on a project related to the effects of climate change in Montreal. This has allowed us to learn even more about the impact of climate change and connect with several members of our community who have an extensive background in this subject. 

As well, we have been able to gather a lot of information by reaching out to our target audience through google forms to hear more about our target audiences’ opinions on our project and improvements we could make.

Furthermore, we have been able to peer edit our project with other young entrepreneur teams who have also developed apps. They provided invaluable feedback because they had very similar experiences of creating apps and businesses while being a student.

Currently, we have a functioning app that can perform the majority of the operations outlined in our plan. We are continuing to finalize some aspects of our app and we are confident that our app will soon be ready to move forward into the pilot stage. Our next step will be to contact sustainable businesses in our community so that we can start to set up our community of partnered businesses that will allow for our app to have an even greater impact on our local community.

We decided to work on our project as a prototype because we felt this would give us the best opportunity to fully elaborate on our ideas and put the most care into our project instead of pursuing a loftier goal and decreasing the quality of our content. This was also in an effort to preserve a balance between attending school and our other projects we have been working on for our other classes and extracurriculars. However, we are continuing to expand this project and we have many goals that we would like to reach to create the version of the app that will best serve our community and reach its fullest potential.

The base of our app was programmed using Thunkable. We also used Airtable to be able to add up the users’ points after they completed a challenge and use these numbers on different pages of our app. The photo that users submit for verification of completion of a challenge will also appear in Airtable. We can go into their account, check the image and then add their points to their account through Airtable.

We also use Airtable for the map feature of our app. We find local eco-friendly stores, and after we set up a partnership with them we put their coordinates in Airtable along with a short description of what they sell. Then, on the user's phone, it shows the location of the store and they can decide whether or not they wish to go and shop there after seeing what the store sells.

The points card that users have on the app is automatically generated and a different QR code is created per account. The stores are given a specific user name to use when they sign in with this user name they are directed to the “scanning” function of our app where they scan the user’s points card and they input how many points are being awarded to the user which is then automatically added to the user’s account. The points the users are rewarded with are based on how much they bought at their local eco-friendly store.

We expect to serve 1000 people by the end of our launch. Right after our launch, we will start by presenting our app to our school. We know that those who download our app and enjoy it will spread the word. We will start by focusing on the island of Montreal and partnering with as many local businesses as possible.

Once we have done that we were hoping to start expanding outward into all the suburbs of Montreal. We would do this by advertising our app on our social media page on Instagram and Facebook. We would also reach out to people in the environmental field who have a big influence and ask them to promote our app. We would also put ads up on Instagram and Snapchat hoping to reach our target market. By doing all of this we hope to gain a user base of 1000 users by the end of the year.

Our three impact goals for the next year are to launch our app, reach 1000 users and partner with 5 local sustainable businesses. 

We plan to launch our app soon. The programming is finished and the next step is simply to put this version on the App Store and the Google Play Store. This would allow us to start reaching out to our community and expanding our user base.

Our second goal is to reach 1000 users by the end of our first year. We believe that this is an attainable goal since, within two months, our Instagram page (@movethe_earth), which offered suggestions to make your habits more sustainable and vegetarian meal replacements, was able to gain over 1200 people. This was even without our app being launched. When we launch our app, we will be able to reach out to our Instagram community and introduce them to our app. As well, we will present the app to the student’s at our school and reach out to more of our Montreal community.

We also plan to partner with 5 local sustainable businesses. This would allow users to take advantage of our sponsored locations feature in our app. This is an essential part of our app and allows us to support our local community.

Our three main goals for this year are all set up so that they can be attainable and measurable. This gives us a concrete plan on how to act to accomplish them. 

Our first goal is to launch our app on the App Store and Google Play Store. This is easily measurable as it is simply one task.

We will use the information we get on the number of users that download our app to see how close we are to our goal of reaching 1000 users by the end of the year. We will see our progress by how close we are to this number and we will adjust our marketing strategy depending on how most of our users find our app and the feedback they provide us with.

Our third goal is to partner with 5 local sustainable businesses. We will reach out to several businesses, especially those that had expressed an interest in our project when we had an interview with them. We will finalize the terms of our contract and, once partnered, we will start promoting them on our app.

There are a few barriers currently impeding us from reaching our greatest potential impact in the next year. The primary one being COVID. Although most of our challenges don’t require people to break any of the covid guidelines, the ones that do (i.e. shopping at your local eco-friendly store) are one of our primary sources of revenue. The smaller our net profit, the less we donate to charity, the smaller our impact is. However, if restrictions tighten up again, we will add challenges that can be done despite these restrictions and encourage users to be aware of the restrictions in their areas.

We also do not possess the full amount of knowledge or skills required to fully launch our idea into the pilot stage. Our app could still use some touch-ups before being launched in the app store and, for that, we require some help. One of the primary reasons we have entered the competition, for mentoring so that we can use the knowledge we gain and apply it, not only to this project but to all the other ones we do in the future.

Our team is well-positioned to deliver this solution because we care deeply about the environment. Both of us have learned so much about the environmental crisis and we are extremely passionate about making a change. We care about helping others reduce their footprint and we are working to become more aware of the impact we have on this earth and reduce it.

We have participated in several climate-related projects and events. We participated in the Montreal Climate March. As well, we are currently working on a Voices of Olympia Canada project that seeks to help women affected by climate-related natural disasters. If our project is chosen, it will be presented to members of the UN. As well, we have worked on projects explaining how food consumption and climate change are related and we have also worked on a project that was focused on how the beginning of the pandemic impacted carbon emissions and plastic pollution in various ways. Through these projects and others, we have been able to learn about a variety of aspects of climate change.

As well, we created an Instagram account for EcoPocket that shared tips and small changes you could make that would allow you to lead a more sustainable life.

In addition, we are donating 20% of our profits to a charity of our users’ choice. This lets the users have an impact on our business and lets us donate to the charities that our audience really wants. This allows us to have an even greater impact on the specific elements of the climate crisis that those we endeavour to serve really want. We also plan to have strategic partnerships with local businesses, not only to improve the users' habits but also to help build our city to be more sustainable.

Currently, we do not have any partnerships formed but we will soon partner with a variety of Montreal based eco-friendly companies. We have already reached out to several in our area. When we met with them while we were still working on our app, they had agreed to theoretically partner with us once we were finished. Once we reach back out to them and form a partnership, our users will be able to go to their stores and receive points based on how much they spend.

Our company will receive a commission of 5% of what our users spend at the store. We spoke with several stores similar to the ones we will partner with and we found that for both parties, this commission was a good compromise.

As 16-year old women who want to change the world, we meet all the criteria necessary in order to compete for this prize. Our solution is addressing a dire problem regarding sustainability. The category in this prize which we fit is “take action to combat climate change and its impacts”. Our solution directly combats climate change, it helps people act more sustainably and live more sustainably. It helps local eco-friendly businesses thrive and it changes the way people live their lives just enough that their actions have an impact but not too much that they become discouraged and do not want to try our app. 

Through this app, we also support environmental charities but we do so through the users by allowing them to choose which charity they would like to make a donation to without actually spending money. This way users can know that they are making a difference and will want to continue using our app to increase their positive impact.

Not applicable.