A few days back, one of my friends asked if I could recommend an app for managing her personal carbon footprint.
I told her I will check out, but at the same time I told her not to hold her breath about the efficacy of these apps.
While I was reviewing global digital solutions for decarbonization, I came across dozens of apps in this regard, but was fairly sceptical about the utility of these apps.
I find many of these apps focus on relatively "trivial" acts like taking your own bag for shopping or using bicycles for short trips etc? Do these acts make your life more sustainable? Perhaps. But will they significantly lower your personal carbon footprint? I doubt it.
Given that a large proportion of a modern human's carbon footprint comes from transport to office and for other long distances, from HVAC, fast fashion and food waste, acting on these should be the priority. If smartphone apps enable us to do these, I think I will recommend them.
On a related note, there are some startups such as Climes.io that have tied up with brands (related logistics, flight, food, wedding, events etc) on the one side and with carbon offset projects on the other and offer consumers the ability to offset CO2 through their purchases. To me, these sound like a better way of reducing one's personal carbon footprint through digital. While I'm not a great fan of offsets, I think they have a reasonably significantly role to play as a transition avenue for decarbonizatio
