Internet CO2 Calculator Gets A Million Visitors
Tags: Carbon Footprint, Climate Change, CO2, Emissions, Lighting, Recycling
The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) launched its snazzy ACT ON CO2 calculator last Summer. The calculator takes the form of an animated, attractive website, which guides people through the steps they need to work out there carbon footprint. The application allows for both individuals and households to tally their emissions, and then provides suggestions for how they can reduce their carbon footprint. Launched by David Miliband in the fitting location of an environmentally friendly central London internet cafe a year ago, the site received its millionth visitor yesterday.
DEFRA's remit integrates economic, social and environmental concerns together in the pursuit of sustainable development, and the online calculator has proven a triumph in reaching those ends. Not only is the ACT ON calculator itself straight foreword and, dare I say it, actually quite fun to use, but it provides recommendations based on each individuals answers which show how everybody can reduce and avoid wasting energy, rather than focusing on simply offsetting it.
In addition, the software behind the DEFRA branded calculator is freely available under public license, so that other companies wishing to incorporate it onto their sites, with their own branding, can do so. The software is regularly updated so that results, and suggestions for reducing emissions, are up to speed with current research and government policy.
With the UN recently highlighting just how important it is that each citizen embraces their own role in combating climate change, the calculator is very much a step in the right direction.
Research commissioned by DEFRA prior to the launch of the calculator found that 94% of the British population now accept that the global climate is changing. 66% of people claimed that they were making some personal efforts to try to reduce their own impact on that changing environment.
People who are keen to try and embrace the challenges that climate change poses often find that practical means of meeting that desire are often hard to pinpoint. Beyond placing recyclables in the recycling bin, switching household bulbs and perhaps leaving the car on the driveway more often, it is genuinely difficult to appreciate the impact that small, but environmentally driven choices make. The calculator qualifies that difference in a hassle free way. It's even worth leaving Second Life or Facebook alone for fifteen minutes just to check it out.
