Project: Molehill - Consumers Enabling Sustainable Supply Chains
Team Members:
Caleb Schappa, Project lead
Ryan Wostarek
Summary:
eCommerce is as convenient as it is ubiquitous in the US, enabling us to save time and be more productive. However, with products often originating overseas, packages can travel thousands of miles before arriving at your doorstep. Molehill calculates CO2 emissions related to your package’s journey and gives you a cheap, simple, and gratifying way to offset the carbon footprint of your online purchases. A typical item (< 1 kg) manufactured in China will travel 7000 miles by boat and 1500 miles by truck to arrive in Austin, TX. That item’s journey will cost less than $0.10 to offset: a small amount that can add up quickly to make a big impact. We believe people will be eager to contribute if they can do so in an easy and convenient way. Molehill merges climate action with eCommerce.
Sustainable Development Goals:
Sustainable Cities and Communities
Responsible Consumption and Production
Climate Action
Skills & Resources Needed:
1-2 full-stack developers (or a front end and a backend developer) familiar with Javascript, HTML, CSS, Google Material Design or Bootstrap, Node.js, API development (REST+JSON). Google firebase (authentication, database, storage), AWS equivalent, or Heroku.
Communications expert for (social media) plan
Expert in the carbon offset market
Expert in payments or banking industry
Post-Capsule Goals:
Launching Your Own Startup
Entrepreneurial Program
University Partnership or Collaboration
Accelerator Program
Incubator Program
Project Motivation:
A final push to get the product to MVP because we think Molehill can make a difference with regard to climate change especially now as the volume of eCommerce purchases has significantly increased over the past few months. The project lead, Caleb Schappa, has lived in Miami for over 10 years and have witnessed rising sea levels firsthand in that short period of time (sunny-day flooding). Everyone talks about needing big projects to make significant changes. However, this team believes if everyone makes small, consistent contributions, big changes can happen. Given the choice, we feel most people would do the right thing when it comes to climate change, as long as it is convenient (as automated as possible) and inexpensive. Molehill is a bottoms-up solution that merges climate action with the busy, connected world in which we live.