In the modern world we are constantly pushing ourselves to become more sustainable than we were before. However, who is to say the companies of which you are a consumer of are holding themselves to the same standard? As it turns out, most are not. GreenDex is a new startup that aims to give a calculated grade to companies based on their sustainable practices. But how does this all work?
If you visit their mobile app — available on both the App Store and Google Play — you will discover a database of major companies with a letter grade attached. Underneath each company dropdown is a report card, with different ratings across environmental, social and governance practices. Here you can find individual companies’ greenhouse gas emission, energy and water consumption, waste generation and gender wage gaps among many other metrics. In order to better understand the University of Maine alumni behind this project, the Maine Campus sat down with the current executive board.
“So it kind of all started when me, Jason and a couple other people decided to go to a hackathon, which is a coding competition in Hartford, Connecticut, called Hack for Delta, like hack for change,” said Lucas Bent, class of ‘25 computer science student and cofounder of GreenDex. “So one of the themes that the competitors could choose to focus on in the competition was sustainability. So making something that sort of targeted the concept of sustainability. And that was really what got us thinking about the idea that eventually turned into GreenDex. And we made a very simple prototype at the competition… We ended up placing top five out of over 100 entrants. So we were pretty happy with that. It was our first hackathon.”
What is most inspiring about this is that this was all done by a few former UMaine students, some of which current students may have known. For students who want to pursue entrepreneurship, Bent says “You’re going to fail a lot. And basically every aspect of it is going to be a learning experience. It’ll be exhausting, but you can do it. And it’s a lot easier to do if you find other people to do it with.”
Kulinskii agrees, adding to this that you should “find something that matters to you and put a lot of effort into it because no matter what you end up doing or pursuing, it’s going to be worthwhile, at least to you.”
To Jason Kulinskii, class of ‘24 computer science student and cofounder of GreenDex, this company is his proof to the world that he can do it. “A realization for me in college was that I have to get a job after this. I have to have something on my resume that proves that I’m not just like some other dude that just kind of went through life and then showed up at a job application and said, hey, give me a job now. I kind of wanted to prove myself and have something to talk about.”
Larger companies are required to publish the metrics GreenDex uses in grading them, however smaller companies are not. This means local businesses must submit their data to GreenDex voluntarily. A project the team is currently working on is getting more representation of small businesses.
“That way we can help promote the smaller companies. So… when students are using GreenDex, say they are on the Orono campus and they want a sandwich and they are like, ‘Oh, I’ll go to Subway.’ We could suggest Harvest Moon Deli instead. That, I feel like, is kind of one of the end goals for getting small businesses onto the account,” said Evan Soucy, fourth-year new media student at UMaine and social media manager for GreenDex.
To get started, the team recommended a few local businesses that students should check out. “Liberty Graphics, they make a lot of really cool t-shirts you see around with the designs. Liberty Organics, they make organic cotton tees, which I can attest are really, really high quality,” said Bent.
For those in the Southern Maine area, Kulinskii recommended “Orange Bike Brewing… the Holy Donut… they try to keep their practices ethical.”
But do not just stop there. If you want to keep in touch on what companies to support, follow the words of Kulinskii; “It had been in the works for over two years, and now it’s available for free on the Google PlayStore and the App Store. So yeah, anybody who’s interested should check it out.”
