The Green Consumption Assistant (GCA) supports consumers in making more sustainable decisions during online shopping. The GCA displays green product alternatives on the search engine Ecosia and provides information about more sustainable alternatives, for example, references to repair, rental, or sharing options. In addition, sustainable websites will be highlighted on Ecosia and the climate commitments of the organisations and companies will be made transparent in a ranking. For the recommendations of the GCA, a comprehensive product database (Green Database) with ecological and social sustainability information is being built up using machine learning techniques.
The GCA is a collaboration project between the Technische Universität Berlin, the Berliner Hochschule für Technik, and the green search engine Ecosia and is funded by the Bundesumweltministerium as a lighthouse project for artificial intelligence in use for ecological challenges. The project embodies a new, interdisciplinary partnership that combines sustainable and behavioural research with machine learning, user-centered design, and digital product development.
In the project, we rely on cooperation and exchange with various sustainability actors, scientists, and label organisations or online shops, to ensure a reliable and comprehensive data set for the recommendations of the Green Consumption Assistant.
In the article titled „Using Artificial Intelligence to make more sustainable behaviour easy for people” #KI-Berlin introduces the GCA to the broader public and describes how our first iteration works. View Blog
1st. Extension Version: Smartphones At the beginning of the project, after a market research and the evaluation of thousands of search requests on Ecosia, we decided to develop a browser extension for product recommendations and to start with the product category „smartphones”. In the long run, it is an advantage that a browser extension triggers…
The sustainability magazine RESET — Digital for Good had an interview with the project manager Ruben Korenke and reports in detail about our project plan as well as the first beta version of the assistant. Visit Website
(Copyright BMUV.de) Tuesday, 1st December 2020, the Bundesumweltministerium introduced the Green Consumption Assistant project as an AI lighthouse project at the Digital-Gipfel of the Bundesregierung with a two-minute-long video. The video can be watched directly here in german language: