Image: Ducky
Between the havoc wrought by unprecedented super hurricanes and the upcoming COP21 climate change summit in Paris at the end of the month, the global environment and its discontents have been making headlines—for good reason. Our species is heading full throttle toward climate-induced catastrophe, and most of us still don't really have any idea what we can do to stop it. This isn't to say that political and technical solutions to climate change are lacking—from carbon taxes to clean energy to geoengineering, the ideas, and the science, are there.Rather, the primary obstacle to combating climate change remains social in nature, which is why a team of researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have partnered with app developers Ducky AS to create a social platform which will allow users to track their carbon footprint in astounding detail and compete with friends to see who can lower their emissions the most."With Ducky, you can easily see the environmental impact of actions you take in everyday life and learn about why they're important," Duck AS co-founder Silje Strøm Solberg said in a statement. "Our goal is to create a business that is not only sustainable economically, but also socially and environmentally."Solberg cofounded Ducky AS in 2014, and with support from Innovation Norway, a government-run initiative offering R&D funding for startups, she was able to roll out a beta platform last year. Currently, Ducky exists as a browser platform, and a mobile app is slated to be released sometime in 2016.Ducky allows users to track the carbon emissions for everything from driving a car to making dinner, using calculations from NTNU's Industrial Ecology Programme to determine accurate values for each activity. For example, the app will show you that drying one load of laundry per week contributes about 0.1 metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere annually."What makes these calculations special is that they're based on Norwegian consumer and habit patterns," said Solberg. "NTNU is one of the first organizations in the world to conduct these types of calculations."The gamification—and, the developers hope, socialization—of one's own carbon footprint is a novel take on combating climate change. And it's one that Solberg thinks has a large potential for effecting change on both a personal and institutional level."Several of us recognized this frustration around climate issues and how difficult it was to make environmentally friendly choices in our daily lives," said Solberg. "Until it gets easier to make everyday decisions based on what's best for social, economic and environmental concerns, services that raise awareness and motivate change in our everyday habits have an important role to play—both for individuals and businesses."By making the most environmentally friendly consumer and lifestyle choices explicit, and by quantifying their impact on climate change, Solberg believes that people will naturally choose the options that are least harmful to the Earth. Her faith in consumer choice is based on more than intuition, however. Research has shown that when a person's environment is arranged in such a way that making healthier or more sustainable choices is obvious and easy to do, people prefer those options."Ducky has handpicked the habits you can change," said Solberg. "They are positive, effective, and easy ones to get started with. At the same time they benefit your health, the local environment and the community. Establishing new habits will reduce CO2 emissions and be your own significant contribution to mitigating climate change."
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