The Personal Carbon Calculator

The creator of the Personal Carbon Calculator is Andreas Zachariah. His creation has won him BSI’s Sustainability Design Awards 2007 for the “Carbon Hero” personal carbon calculator. The key chain sized device doubles up as a gadget that keeps track of your ‘carbon footprint’. Agreed that footprints on the sands of time sounds more romantic, but if have even an ounce of concern for our fragile environment then you will take this invention seriously. Andreas believes that once people have hardcore figures in front of them, then the impact of their actions will have more meaning to them. To elaborate: “Carbon Hero calculates the exact carbon footprint of the user’s transport habits by identifying different forms of transport taken as a user travels through ‘space’, by virtue of their relative location, velocity and the pattern of their activity. All of this comes in a unit the size of a key ring. Once gathered, the data is downloaded to software on a PC or mobile phone, which displays the amount of carbon used and the amount of credits needed to be purchased in order to offset the amount used.”

To quote the poem “be careful how you tread on the driven snow, for every mark you will leave will show”, sums up the concept behind the carbon footprint that Andreas Zachariah is talking about. Hopefully the Carbon Hero will help us to make wiser decisions.
Andreas Zachariah, a student graduating with an MA in Industrial Design Engineering and the first accepted to study at the Royal College of Art (RCA) with an MBA, is one of this year’s winners of BSI’s Sustainability Design Awards 2007 for his “Carbon Hero™” personal carbon calculator.
Carbon Hero™ calculates the exact carbon footprint of the user’s transport habits by identifying different forms of transport taken as a user travels through ‘space’, by virtue of their relative location, velocity and the pattern of their activity. All of this comes in a unit the size of a key ring.
Once gathered, the data is downloaded to software on a PC or mobile phone which displays the amount of carbon used and the amount of credits needed to be purchased in order to offset the amount used.
Andreas comments “In an age where consumers are making purchasing decisions based on their environmental impact there’s no reason why they shouldn’t make the same choice about transport, be it public or private, on a daily basis. Online methods for calculating personal carbon footprints fall down on the fact that they rely on the user to estimate usage. Carbon Hero™ uses sophisticated sensors to pinpoint usage thus giving a much more accurate assessment of the user’s impact on the environment”.
With the availability of detailed information provided by Carbon Hero™, the user can choose to change their transport habits to reduce their impact on the environment, or offset usage through carefully selected projects.
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