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A team of computer scientists build an AI-powered app that encourages eco-friendly living

Going green sounds simple, but Assistant Professor Sharon Hsiao knows it’s not always so easy. While many people take some daily steps to protect the planet, they often struggle to adopt consistent eco-friendly habits.

That’s why she created MyEcoPal, a mobile app that uses artificial intelligence to simplify sustainable living. The app analyzes a user’s energy consumption and offers personalized, eco-conscious suggestions, like switching to energy-efficient LED lightbulbs or line drying laundry instead of using a dryer.

Although Hsiao’s background is in computer science, her focuses more specifically on how digital tools can help people learn and apply information. Over the last few years, she has conducted five behavioral studies on waste management learning that explore how AI can personalize sustainability education and influence eco-friendly habits.

Given this research, Hsiao is mindful of the concerns surrounding AI’s impact on water and energy resources. Still, she is hopeful that by harnessing this technology, MyEcoPal can make a positive impact on daily sustainable practices.

“We want to bridge the gap between knowing and doing sustainable actions. Our main goal is to help people do the small things,” says Hsiao, who teamed up with computer science and engineering doctoral student Qiming Sun Ph.D. ’26 to build the app. Their research laid the foundation for MyEcoPal’s instructional approach and content design.

How MyEcoPal works:

While Hsiao and Sun are still fine-tuning the user experience and plan to launch the full app this fall, MyEcoPal will guide people through three key steps:

1. Measure your impact by calculating your current carbon footprint through fun, interactive questionnaires that break down environmentally conscious habits by category.
2. Discover smarter choices with help from the app’s AI assistant. Use filters to customize suggestions based on your daily routine.
3. Make a plan and set personal goals to reduce your environmental impact. Track your new sustainable habits and earn rewards for making greener choices.

The app will also use context-aware technology to determine a user’s general location based on their daily habits. Hsiao says this approach is helpful for providing eco-friendly suggestions that align with local laws, which often vary by city, county, and state.

The idea for the context-aware technology came from a situation Hsiao experienced herself. During a trip to Atlanta, she noticed public spaces only had two waste bins: landfill and recycling. As a California resident familiar with a three-bin system that includes compost, she wondered how locals were expected to compost without a designated bin.

That moment made her realize that AI-powered technology could give people the knowledge they need to make more sustainable decisions.

“It can be hard for people to keep track of what to do when every state is different. We want our users to be able to make conscious, educated decisions about sustainability no matter where they are,” Hsiao says.

The latest version of the app builds on findings from a  that Hsiao presented at the 25th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies in July, which examined how º£½ÇÉçÇø students might use AI to guide their sustainable habits.

As part of a weeklong study, 29 students were quizzed on ways to reduce, reuse, or recycle common household items, with the option to request AI-generated hints.

For example, when shown a photo of a brown paper bag, some students answered independently, while others used hints to refine their answers. By the end of the study, students reported that collaborating with AI helped them adopt more eco-friendly habits. Hsiao used these findings to improve MyEcoPal’s suggestions.

“I think AI is a useful tool, but we still need to use our own judgment. I encourage my students to explore AI so they can use it to their advantage instead of blindly trusting whatever it shows them,” says Hsiao.

Next up for Hsiao is making the data in MyEcoPal easier to understand for users. Teaming up with Yuhong Liu, a fellow professor in º£½ÇÉçÇø’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering, she plans to make the visual representation of complex energy data in MyEcoPal more engaging. She is also integrating º£½ÇÉçÇø’s Center for Sustainability’s playbooks into the app, which provide a comprehensive list of eco-friendly actions and a reward system to motivate users to adopt sustainable habits.

“I’ve always worked with artificial intelligence in the education space,” Hsiao says. “But now, I also hope to develop apps to provide personalized learning in sustainability. I hope MyEcoPal will be the number one app that helps people do sustainability right.”