Sustainable Carbon Counters

The GCAP tool is a personal carbon calculator that incorporates all of the major aspects of an individual's carbon footprint. The input interface is a questionnaire to determine each aspect of users' carbon footprint. The output is a pie chart. Environmental and social scientists use the GCAP tool for surveying, educating and probing participants. It is used to scope the awareness that a participant has of the carbon emissions of their lifestyle, and to discuss the practices that shape their carbon footprint. In its current form, the GCAP tool consists of a multitude of data as well as a model for computing carbon emissions. The sustainability of data and models is hindered by their lack of transparency, their confinement to a single application, and the difficulties involved in updating them. Furthermore, as an Excel application, the GCAP tool is restrictive in the way that it can be used for studies.

The first aim of this project is to port the back-end of the tool to a well-structured database in the cloud with a well-defined application programming interface (API), that can be accessed remotely by applications on different devices. The tool will incorporate the existing input-output model for emissions calculations, but the API will be extendable so that further models could be developed and plugged-in. This is important because there are multiple economic models that could be used to calculate carbon emissions, and facilitating their incorporation would broaden the user base. In future, we aim to extend the system further by facilitating community-driven collaborative updating of the carbon emissions data.

Our second aim is to port the existing Microsoft Excel tool to a smartphone application. From a field-study perspective, the current version of the tool is limited - it can only be used while a conductor is present so that data and feedback can be recorded. Ideally, the participant would use the application multiple times throughout a study, and the conductor would gather and analyse the output and their feedback, and potentially nudge them to stimulate behaviour change. With the tool in its current form this would require significant commitment from both the participant and the conductor, and would result in a contrived experience for the participant, possibly influencing their feedback and behaviour change. We aim to create an iPhone 'app' to address these issues. The app will mirror the current GCAP tool functionality, complemented by an optional feedback system whereby the user can send a computed carbon footprint to our data server. They will also be able to submit vocal anecdotes or photos related to their lifestyle, consumption or carbon footprint. A further 'nudge facility' will enable the conductor to send prompts to the participants in response to their data. In this way, there are two intervention systems at play: the display of a participant's carbon footprint, and the nudges from the conductor. The app will also incorporate a Facebook plugin so that participants can share their carbon footprint. This generates awareness and incorporates social influences into probing and intervention, something that is not possible with existing cultural probes.

The final aim of the project is to enhance the aspects of the existing database and carbon footprint model that deal with shopping-related food and drink, incorporating these into a special-purpose iPhone app to be used for field study and educational purposes. We have access to rich emissions data in this area through collaborations with Booths supermarkets and Mike Berners-Lee, the author of 'How bad are bananas? The carbon footprint of everything'. Our app will enable consumers to index shopping items in multiple levels of detail, make suggestions for behaviour change, and record analytics about their usage and thereby used in qualitative studies by social scientists.

This project will generate cutting edge insight into the complex relationship between individuals' lifestyles and practices and their resulting GHG emissions, while making the very valuable carbon calculation information available to the sustainability community and the wider public. The primary beneficiaries of this research are the environmental and social science communities, the mobile human-computer interaction (HCI) community, and the sustainability community. This benefit will be empirical, conceptual and methodological:
1. The environmental and social science communities will benefit from (i) the availability of cultural probes for both overall carbon footprint information, and for shopping-based food and drink information, and (ii) an increased understanding of practice and consumption in both of these domains and how this impacts on current debates concerning consumption, lifestyle and everyday life and their interaction with other more global issues.
2. The mobile HCI domain will benefit from a better understanding of how to effectively design nudging technology that interacts with and educates users about the sensitive and potentially overwhelming issue of carbon externalities as well as an exploration and understanding of some of the ethical issues involved in such approach.
3. The sustainability community will benefit from the availability of our open, online centralised carbon emissions database and programming interface by being able to create their own applications with minimal effort, with updates to the data and models occurring transparently.

We intend and hope that the participants in our research will also be beneficiaries rather than simple participants through gaining some insights into aspects of their everyday behaviour and the possibilities (and problems) of change.

The ultimate beneficiary of this research will be the UK and its public. The dangers of climate change are becoming widely acknowledged and stringent policies are starting to be put in place to mitigate them. As part of the Climate Change Act 2008, the UK has set targets to reduce carbon emissions by at least 26% by 2020 and 80% by 2050. Despite this awareness, public behaviour remains almost unchanged-the questions of how to engage the public in the carbon agenda remains an unsolved challenge of our times. The motivated public will benefit from applications that will help them to monitor their general carbon emissions and those related to food and drink. We anticipate that the UK will benefit from the insights we collect into how to effectively engage the wider public.

Finally, the beneficiaries include supermarkets, and Booths in particular (though we anticipate that other supermarkets may well become involved). Defra's survey of public attitudes and behaviour towards the environment clearly shows that whilst a significant proportion of UK consumers are keen to know more about the carbon implications of different shopping choices, there is also a risk of confusing or alienating some customers by presenting such information. This presents supermarkets with a real difficulty; how to make information available without forcing it upon people. Our food and drink carbon emissions application will allow supermarkets to increase awareness of climate change issues associated with their products without compromising their customer base.