GreenDex History

...

Hack4Delta

At the start of our junior year in college, a friend invited us to a hackathon in Connecticut. None of us had ever been to one, but we figured the 6-hour one-way adventure could be eye-opening. With the theme of sustainability, we wanted to make the most impact in just 48 hours. Our prototype was called Basket, a simple lookup of 10,000 companies graded A-F based on carbon emissions. For our first hackathon, we had beat 21 of the 25 teams that had shown up and made it to the final round of judging. For a small group of students from the University of Maine, we felt like we had struck gold and wanted to expand on our idea.

Sept 2023
...

GreenDex Is Born

We thought to ourselves, Carbon emissions—that’s a great start, but that isn’t everything. If you are going to grade a company, get the whole picture. We dug more into this field, and found what we were doing was already a well-known field, ESG. The thing about ESG is the widely private investor heavy enviornment. We knew we wanted to change that and stay rooted in education and consumer awareness. Once we discovered WikiRate, our ESG dreams took flight. Our one metric for carbon emissions turned into an entire grading pipeline featuring water waste, public slave labor statements, and money spent on fines. We were finally putting together the Green Index that could have the potential to inform consumers who they were actually shopping from.

July 2024
...

Social Media & Marketing

It became more and more apparent that the two CS students might have to do more than code and research; it was time for social media. We started with a unique custom logo and then created our LinkedIn & Instagram pages. Our soft launches on these platforms saw some success with a combined 88 followers and 9,974 views. With so much of the application left to develop, we decided it would be best to give developing more attention and sideline our social media goals for the time being.

Feb 2025
GreenDex News Coverage

GreenDex News Coverage

Turns out people are interested in our idea. After over a year of developing, reaching out to businesses, and working with groups like IFM and SCORE, we had our seven minutes of fame on CBS Maine. It was a surreal experience being on live television, and we hope to get more coverage in the near future. If you want to see the full interview, you can click the image to watch.

April 2025
...

GreenDex Beta Launch

As we wrap up polishing and put all of our action plans onto the table, we head to our first-ever launch. We want to start slow by releasing to friends and family, making sure the app is polished before a full release. During this time we also hope to grow our social media coverage and expand on our brand reach and establish ourselves as a trustworthy open-source platform that people can rely on.

July 2025