While e-commerce allows users to easily buy goods from the comfort of their homes, consuming only new products also depletes natural resources and increases waste and pollution. Consumers may not be aware of second-hand products available nearby and are not always in the habit of looking for them. The Nearbuy solution is a shopping assistant that integrates with existing online shopping sites such as Amazon, IKEA, and Structube. When shopping these sites, a notification automatically appears if similar pre-loved items can be found locally. Users can then review the suggested item and buy local. The team hopes their solution can lessen the consumption of materials that create the biggest waste footprint and reduce the environmental impacts of long-distance shipping.

Climate change directly impacts the performance of various seeds from one growing season to the next, introducing unpredictability in food security and making farmers’ crop decisions even riskier. To remain sustainable, farmers must be able to adjust seed decisions in response to ever-changing conditions. Regional organizations today publish results of large-scale seed trials, but farmers are left to interpret the performance data themselves. ESSPERA aims to help improve food security at the source: agricultural production. It helps farmers select the best possible seeds to plant in the coming growing season, considering both published seed trial data and more specific, localized weather forecasts for the next growing season.

A big issue with waste management starts at the source. Everyday citizens may be unsure how to sort solid waste appropriately. This causes increased costs and complexity once waste reaches processing facilities, and often results in improper disposal of materials. The SwachBIN solution uses a camera to identify trash coming into a bin and classifies it as recyclable or not, based on an AI machine learning algorithm. Once the item is classified, it is automatically sorted into the appropriate section of the bin.