Even though you recycle, do meat-free mondays and use reusable bags at the supermarket, you may not be as green as you think you are. Well now you can check with a new app developed to measure your carbon footprint.
Environmentalists are up-to-date on all the sustainable practices to reduce their impact on climate change. Using reusable bags, riding a bike to work and eating vegetarian meals reduces one’s carbon output — but by how much?
Well now you will be able to tell, thanks to Oroeco. Created by a San-Francisco based company of the same name, Oroeco is an app that can help individuals track their own carbon footprint.
According to EcoWatch, the app calculates your carbon value based on your daily decisions — including retail purchases, food choices, energy consumption and travel.
Turning Green to Gold
The app allows you to link to Facebook and share your carbon output, so you’re subjected to shame from your friends and followers. You can also compare your own carbon output to your friends, and the results may surprise you.
“Something that comes as a shock to a lot of our users: The average person who says they care about climate change actually has a substantially worse than average footprint,” Ian Monroe, CEO of Oroeco told Grist.
What could be someone’s carbon output downfall? Traveling.
“You have a lot of people who are using reusable bags and water bottles, driving a Prius, maybe eating a bit more of a veggie friendly diet,” Monroe said. “But then they’re flying to Bali or South Africa or something once a year. They end up having a larger carbon footprint than a conservative guy who drives an SUV in the suburbs of Atlanta but doesn’t fly anywhere.”
So what if your carbon output is higher than your friends? The app provides 50 personalized tips on how you can cut down and save money while doing it.
Monroe said that the first goal of this app is to tackle awareness, but he wants to make sure that a person’s carbon footprint remains visible. “What I want to know is how am I doing versus what’s normal, how am I doing versus what my friends are doing, how am I doing versus what’s actually needed to solve climate change — versus what’s actually achievable,” he said.
Source: Nationswell
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