By Braedon Junker and Chris Krantz
Link to website:
https://chriskrantz.wixsite.com/climatefax
It is often (and unfortunately) believed that individual decisions cannot help in changing the direction our climate is headed. This misperception has led to personal consumer decisions that continue to negatively impact our environment. As massive corporations continue to push for more sustainable ways of conducting their business, we believe that the consumer must be aware of these efforts and make consumption decisions accordingly if they want to make an impact on our environment. Likewise, members of society should be made aware of the impact that their diet has on the environment as it pertains to emissions. Food and product consumption decisions are both factors that contribute to the emissions of greenhouse gases and yet they are rarely ever spoken about. These emissions are something we wanted to focus our project on due to the severity of greenhouse gas emissions causing our climate to warm. This carbon released into the atmosphere has caused the earth to warm so much that we are already beginning to see the impacts they have on our environment.
Another component that goes into the consumer’s understanding of their role in helping the environment is the policy decisions of both governments and corporations. Due to the importance of these decisions, we felt that it was important to create a platform that also included updates on these proposals as they pertain to certain products and foods. Although it may sometimes feel like private citizens have no impact on public policy beyond voting, we believe that individuals can make impacts on the decisions of their lawmakers and politicians by displaying to them their interest in consuming goods and services from companies who go above and beyond to reduce their carbon footprint.
We also felt that it would be important to include recent emission trends from the COVID-19 pandemic as an example to show how consumer decisions can greatly affect the direction greenhouse gas emissions are going. As a result of the emerging COVID-19 Pandemic, private citizens decided to fly less, drive less, and stay home, causing drastic drops in greenhouse gas emissions in early 2020. Unfortunately, these levels have since returned to what they were before the pandemic, but they can still remind us that changes in consumer choices are impactful on our environment.
With all of this in mind, we decided to create a website called ClimateFAX which serves as a one-stop shop for all emissions related information as it pertains to food, vehicles, and consumer products. Unfortunately, much of the data regarding emissions of certain products is kept away from the public eye. Many research teams keep this data stored in hard-to-find databases for purchase well beyond the average consumer’s price tag. Our site, however, is freely accessible to all users and a place where they can find and compare the emissions information of products from a Honda Civic to a cup of coffee. The majority of the data found on our website has been scraped from newspaper articles in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, as well as from annual Carbon Footprint Impact Reports of major public companies such as Apple, Nike, Microsoft, and Starbucks. Although our site currently does not have much data, the format and potential of the site is what makes it so important for future use as we continue to add to the site.
In creating this website, it was incredibly informative to see just how much carbon is emitted into the air per 1 kilogram of food or one small consumer product. This takeaway that we had is exactly what we believe is essential for all members of society to see in order to fight the looming threat of climate change. Taking beef as an example for food, the user of this site can learn that in producing 1 kilogram of beef roughly 60 kilograms of greenhouse gases are emitted into the air. Not only this, but the user can also find exactly how that number is achieved. It is often the case that this number is reached as a direct result of land use and farming methods. This issue brings to light the need for environmentally safer alternative types of food which is why we added to our site an alternatives tab which can be used to recommend users similar foods that emit less greenhouse gases.
Similar to the section of ClimateFAX which displays emissions facts about food, we created a tab that displays the emissions data associated with individual products. On the website we include a wide variety of products from clothing to electronics – all of which have varying levels of emissions. We found it incredibly interesting how each product’s total emissions were calculated. For clothing, the vast majority of this came from the materials that were used, whereas electronics often included the amount of use by the consumer. This is incredibly important for consumers to be aware of as they too are responsible for greenhouse gas emissions – not just the major corporations they buy from.
Both of these components on our site are importantly linked to the “Policy/News” section which, as mentioned earlier, includes recent articles that relate to policy changes within the government and corporations. Updates like these are extremely important for consumers to be aware of especially in the event where a company has implemented a new policy to decrease their carbon footprint. As an example, users of our website would be aware that Peet’s Coffee has recently launched a “Carbon Neutral Series” of coffee. We encourage our users to follow these policy and news articles closely as the world’s response to rising emissions is changing daily.
In conclusion, the threat of climate change is advancing faster than the majority of society is willing to comprehend, and because of this we created a tool that we believe gives users an eye-opening introduction to their own role in affecting the environment. ClimateFAX is not intended to make users feel overly guilty about their past decisions, but it should be used by those who are open to the idea of purchasing products with the environment in mind in the future. Similar to the nutritional facts on the back of a bag of chips, this website is intended to give its user an inside look at the environmental facts or ClimateFAX as we would like to call it. Please check out our website if you have the time!
Citations:
Product Data: https://carboncatalogue.coclear.co/?sector=all&company=all&year=2015&sort=sector
Food Data: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualising-the-greenhouse-gas-impact-of-each-food/
iPhone Data: https://www.compareandrecycle.co.uk/blog/iphone-lifecycle-what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-an-iphone
WSJ Article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122304950601802565
Nike Impact Report: https://purpose-cms-preprod01.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/26225049/FY20_NIKE_Inc_Impact_Report2.pdf
Apple Environmental Report: https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/notebooks/13-inch_MacBookPro_PER_May2020.pdf
Lego Impact Report: https://www.lego.com/cdn/cs/aboutus/assets/bltbc3014acd4030002/LEGO_Group_2018_CO2_emissions_publication.pdf
PlayStation Carbon Footprint: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/5/20985330/ps4-sony-playstation-environmental-impact-carbon-footprint-manufacturing-25-anniversary
COVID Report and Graph used: https://www.icos-cp.eu/gcp-covid19