Commited App: A Carbon Footprint App Powering Sustainable Commerce for Shopify Stores
Project Overview
Commited App is a full-stack carbon footprint app designed to help e-commerce businesses make every sale environmentally responsible.
Developed for Commited, a global carbon certification provider, the project connects online retailers with verified carbon offset programs — allowing customers to view, track, and neutralize the carbon impact of their purchases in real time.
The app works as a Shopify custom app that calculates each order’s carbon emissions and offers buyers the option to offset them directly at checkout.
It bridges Commited’s private API with Shopify’s e-commerce infrastructure, turning sustainability into a seamless part of the buying experience.
Enable customers to add certified offset credits to their cart at checkout.
Connect Shopify merchants to Commited’s REST API, automating certification generation, validation, and delivery.
Ensure a secure, scalable, and full-stack web app development structure for long-term API communication and data accuracy.
Objective
The project’s main goal was to integrate carbon tracking and certification into daily online retail transactions without friction.
Key objectives included:
Build a carbon footprint tracker app that automatically measures the emissions of products added to the cart.
Allow store owners to purchase and manage carbon certificates directly through the app.
Create a carbon footprint calculator app that converts real-time cart data into CO₂ equivalents.
Our Role
Weptile was responsible for designing, developing, and deploying the entire Shopify app integration, including both the merchant-facing interface and the backend communication layer.
Our tasks included:
Creating a Shopify app using Remix framework (Shopify CLI + Remix template).
Building a custom middleware API to handle secure communication between Shopify and Commited’s private API.
Designing a Shopify widget to be embedded on store cart pages for real-time carbon emission calculation.
Developing stock-tracking logic to manage the merchant’s carbon certificate balance.
Enabling automated creation and delivery of digital carbon certificates after each purchase.
Implementing a dashboard for merchants to view total emissions offset and certificates issued.
Ensuring all data exchanges comply with Shopify security and privacy guidelines.
This project showcases Weptile’s expertise in Shopify custom app development and API integration development for sustainability-driven platforms.
Solution Highlights
End-to-End Carbon Tracking Workflow
At the heart of the Commited carbon footprint app lies its ability to calculate, visualize, and offset carbon emissions for every product added to a Shopify cart.
The system automatically determines the estimated CO₂ output for each order using parameters such as:
Product weight and material composition
(ground, air, or sea)
Shipping distance and method
retrieved via Commited’s API
Packaging and production category data
The app’s front-end widget, developed as a React component within the Remix framework, integrates seamlessly into the Shopify cart page. It displays the real-time carbon footprint of the shopper’s cart and offers a clear “Offset My Carbon” option.
Users can instantly see how many kilograms of carbon their purchase generates and choose to neutralize it with a certified offset — turning climate action into a visible and optional checkout experience.
To ensure performance, the carbon calculation requests are cached and optimized through the middleware API, preventing unnecessary API calls during browsing sessions.
Dynamic Carbon Certificate Inventory for Merchants
Each merchant using the app maintains a live carbon certificate inventory within their Shopify admin.
When a store subscribes to the Commited App, it purchases a set amount of carbon offset credits (e.g., kilograms or tons of CO₂) that are stored in their account balance.
Here’s how the logic flows:
When a customer adds a carbon offset to the cart, the system checks the merchant’s available balance through the Commited API.
1
The app deducts the correct offset amount from the merchant’s inventory.
2
Upon order completion, a unique, traceable carbon certificate is automatically created by Commited’s API.
3
The certificate includes:
4
- Total CO₂ neutralized
- Project source and certification details (e.g., Verified Carbon Standard, Gold Standard)
- Certificate ID and verification link
- Downloadable PDF sent via email to both merchant and customer
Scalable Two-Layer API Infrastructure
To ensure security, scalability, and speed, Weptile implemented a two-layer API architecture:
Commited Private API:
- Calculates carbon emissions for products or carts.
- Manages carbon stock and offsets.
- Generates and stores verified carbon certificates.
Weptile Middleware API:
- Acts as a protective layer between Shopify and Commited’s API.
- Handles authentication, rate limiting, error catching, and request optimization.
- Implements OAuth 2.0 for secure, tokenized communication between systems.
- Ensures consistent uptime and fallback responses even if Commited’s API experiences downtime.
Merchant Dashboard & Sustainability Analytics
Merchants can log into a dedicated dashboard interface that visualizes key sustainability metrics.
The dashboard was built as a React-based web app embedded in Shopify Admin and includes:
- Total CO₂ offset (in kilograms or tons)
- Carbon credit balance and usage history.
- Monthly carbon impact trends.
- Certificate issuance logs
- Customer participation rates showing what percentage of buyers added carbon offsets
Data is pulled through GraphQL queries for performance and updated in real time through WebSocket connections.
These analytics transform sustainability from a passive initiative into a strategic business metric, enabling brands to quantify and communicate their impact to customers, investors, and regulators.
Automation, Notifications & Certification Delivery
Automation was central to reducing merchant overhead and creating a frictionless experience.
Through Shopify webhooks and Commited API triggers, the system automatically performs several critical functions:
- Detects when an order is completed.
- Sends order data (product weight, price, country, etc.) to Commited API.
- Generates the customer’s digital carbon certificate in PDF format.
- Syncs certificate metadata back to Shopify as a custom order metafield.
- Sends an automated email notification to the customer, including a download link to their verified certificate.
For merchants, all of these actions happen behind the scenes — requiring no manual updates or approvals.
This automation improved processing speed by 90% compared to traditional manual certification methods, while maintaining a secure, traceable chain of data.
The result is a carbon tracker app that runs invisibly yet effectively — keeping sustainability effortless for both merchants and shoppers.
Technology Stack
The Commited App was engineered using modern frameworks and enterprise-grade infrastructure — ensuring high performance, data security, and seamless integration between Shopify and Commited’s API.
Frontend
React (Remix Framework)
Delivers fast, interactive UI components inside Shopify admin and store pages.
Backend
Node.js + Express
Manages authentication, carbon calculations, and communication with Commited API.
Middleware API
Custom REST API (Weptile-built)
Handles secure API proxying, rate-limiting, and error management between Shopify and Commited.
Authentication
Shopify OAuth 2.0 + JWT
Ensures secure login and token-based communication.
APIs
Shopify Admin API / Storefront API + Commited Private API
Syncs order data, carbon calculations, and certificate delivery.
Database
PostgreSQL
Stores merchant data, transaction records, and certificate inventory.
Cloud Hosting
AWS (EC2, RDS, S3)
Provides scalable infrastructure with automatic backups and global availability.
CI/CD Pipeline
GitHub Actions
Automates build, test, and deployment cycles.
Monitoring & Logs
AWS CloudWatch + Sentry
Enables real-time monitoring and performance optimization.
Security Layer
SSL, HTTPS, IAM Policies
Protects sensitive API communication and certificate data.
This full-stack architecture makes the Commited App both robust and extendable — ideal for integrating other platforms, like WooCommerce or custom headless stores, in the future.
Security & Compliance
The app meets both Shopify’s app-security standards and environmental certification data-protection policies.
Encrypted OAuth communication between Shopify and Commited servers.
GDPR and CCPA-compliant data handling.
Secure, tokenized storage for merchant credentials.
Continuous server monitoring and vulnerability scans.
AWS IAM roles to restrict developer-level access.
Impact
The Commited App successfully turned sustainability into a tangible, automated experience for both merchants and buyers:
Integrated carbon-neutral checkout in under 10 minutes for Shopify stores.
Enabled more than 10,000 carbon certificates to be issued during the first testing phase.
Gave retailers a measurable way to showcase their environmental responsibility to customers.
Reduced manual processing time for certification creation by over 90% thanks to automated workflows.
Increased customer engagement and purchase conversions for eco-friendly stores by up to 18%.
Beyond performance metrics, the project proved that API development and integration can directly drive sustainability and revenue growth — a model that Weptile now helps replicate across multiple green-tech solutions.