Are You A Carbon Bigfoot?
The talented people at Wink and Hello Viking have recently been held responsible for producing this Facebook app that calculates your personal carbon footprint so that all your friends can see how badly you abuse our natural resources, or how green you really are.
I chose to post this because it’s pretty awesome that PriceWaterhouseCoopers (the first professional US firm to announce carbon reduction efforts) has been really open minded about using social communities and geeky design firms to push their initiatives.
The app is designed well, functions almost seamlessly (I only encountered one bug) and does a good job of illustrating a rough estimate of your carbon footprint. Now, it could be better, because it doesn’t ask whether you’re a vegetarian or carnivore. This distinction makes a huge difference because of how much energy goes into processing meat products, but it’s a step in the right direction. Hopefully more companies will follow… and this weekend I promise to eat less bacon.
I think you should hold a contest. Whoever has the biggest carbon footprint wins a lifetime supply of used Cathode Ray Tubes.
Thanks for the kind words, Tim! It was a challenging assignment, as you’ve noticed, to architect an experience most applicable to college students. The data source we harnessed (AMEE) does not currently provide information on food consumption–vegetarian vs carnivore–otherwise, we would have considered incorporating it in Carbon Bigfoot.
The guys at Wink are really great to work with, too. We very much appreciated their insights and collaboration.
Any chance we can get a link with our name? http://helloviking.com
Tim
Ah, thanks for the insight Tim! Yes, I can see how not having enough data can affect the nature of the project.
You’re linked now too!