Team EcoDuo
Wasteless
A collaborative app project to reduce expired food waste—built for awareness, daily habits, and healthier kitchens.
Collaboration
Wasteless was developed as a two-person team project under Team EcoDuo—pairing research, storytelling, and no-code development to turn concern about food waste into a concrete tool people can use at home.
This project was a Semifinalist in the national Technovation Girls competition 2024.
The problem
Food waste has grown into a global challenge: roughly 2.5 billion tons of food are wasted each year, and in the U.S. a large share is discarded per person after it is grown, shipped, and sold. When food rots in landfills it releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas—contributing to a significant fraction of human-caused emissions.
The project connects this issue to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (including responsible consumption, sustainable communities, and health and well-being): cutting waste is both an environmental and a social imperative.
Early research included a survey (largely ages 13–18): many respondents cared about waste but still cleared expired food from the fridge about once a month—suggesting they want to do better but need simple tools and reminders, not guilt alone.
The app: Wasteless
Wasteless is designed as a friendly, practical app that helps users track what they buy, see what is nearing expiration, and act before food is thrown away—laying the groundwork for recipe ideas and future motivation features.
- Pantry & expiration tracking — log items, default purchase date, and expiration so the app can surface what to use soon.
- Recipes from what you have — reduce “I don't know what to cook” waste by suggesting directions aligned with items on hand (expanded in future iterations).
- Account & progress — sign up / log in to save pantry data across sessions.
- Roadmap — streaks, leaderboards, and social sharing for engagement; possible AI-assisted grocery recognition; partnerships with stores and food charities in future versions.
How we built it
We sketched layouts on paper, refined visuals in Canva, then implemented the prototype in Thunkable—iterating as we learned the platform, narrowed scope to core flows, and improved the UI from tester feedback. The pitch and product videos document both the problem narrative (pitch) and a walkthrough of features and code (product).
What testers said
“Easy to use and did not require much of my time—I became more aware of when food was about to expire.”
“Helped me be more conscious of what I bought; my grocery list became more concise.”
“My fridge was much easier to clear at the end of the week.”
(Paraphrased from family and friends who tried early builds—shared in our product video script.)
Explore
Demo
Product walkthrough: Thunkable app, features, build story, and tester feedback (Technovation demo video).
Open demo pageWatch the Pitch
Problem, environmental impact, UN goals, survey insights, and how Wasteless addresses food waste at the individual level.
Watch the pitch