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Receipt Carbon Estimator

Shows the carbon impact of everyday purchases.

Intermediate36h2–3 people16/20 fit
TL;DR

Build Receipt Carbon Estimator for conscious shoppers in ~36h with 2–3 people. Stack: Next.js + OCR + LLM.

Why it wins: Tangible impact story with visual results.

Build flow

01 · Problem
People buy things every day but have no idea about the carbon cost.
02 · Solution
Upload a receipt. Estimate the carbon and suggest lower-impact alternatives.
03 · Build
  1. 1OCR receipt items
  2. 2Map items to emission factors
  3. 3LLM suggests swaps
  4. 4Results card
04 · Demo
Upload one receipt → show carbon number + one alternative suggestion.

MVP checklist

  • Receipt upload
  • Item-level CO₂
  • Greener swaps
  • Monthly total

Tech stack

TechRole
Next.jsFrontend + API routes
OCRText from images
LLMLanguage model

Reference repos

Open-source projects you can build on. Links checked 2026-10-31.

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