App for repairing, reusing, and reselling IKEA furniture wins Prague hackathon

The Re-pair + Re-use + Re-sell app, intended for the repair, reuse, and resale of used IKEA furniture, has won the GreenHack European green hackathon held online from Thursday. The results of the hackathon were announced in Prague on Saturday evening.

The winning team, Unicorn Hackers, was awarded a top prize of 2,500 euros.

A total of 200 participants tackled 11 challenges concerning worldwide issues including climate change, exorbitant consumption, irresponsible production, and inefficient management of resources. Each team was given 36 hours to draw up prototype solutions.

A hackathon is a one or two-day event where a group of programmers, designers, and other IT experts create a prototype solution for a particular issue. These ethical hackers use their skills for the good of the others.

The hackathon topics are usually challenges that we face in modern times, such as health, transportation, energy, and life in large cities.

"Our application will be able to identify IKEA furniture via a QR code, and customers can simply order missing parts or have them made, draw ideas to improve their furniture, or sell redundant pieces of furniture," said Tobiáš Vybíral, from the Unicorn Hackers team.

"We want to teach customers to behave in an environmentally-friendly and responsible way and inspire them to extend the lifespan of things naturally."

BASF in your pocket, created by the Best_BASF_app team, finished second in the hackathon with a universal solution to marking chemical compounds.

Third place went to the Nature Catcher app, created by the Vysočina team SUDs, which tackled the problem of illegal waste dumping as well as helping increase the number of tourists in the Vysočina Region.

Fourth place was awarded to the Second Life for Bottles app, from the Balance Is Motion team, which presented designs of lights and shaped bricks for the Plzeňský Prazdroj brewery.

GreenHack was held under the auspices of the European Commission within the European Green Week 2021, in cooperation with the Czech Environment Ministry, the Industry and Trade Ministry, and the Capital City of Prague.

The organizer of GreenHack is the Insane Business Ideas company, which has already staged more than 20 hackathons.