To estimate the impact of a credit card purchase, Joro’s Carbonizer ties information about a purchase to national-level datasets on the carbon intensity of production, transportation, and end-of-life use across industries.
It's impossible for any single organization to accurately know the exact carbon footprint of each and every product out there. Joro’s Carbonizer doesn't aim to be 100% accurate. Instead, it intends to help you understand the most important drivers of your footprint to help you make decisions that matter.
For instance, instead of comparing the footprint of one brand of beef to another, we seek to reveal that the choice of chicken over beef is the one you should be relatively more concerned about. Over time, we'll help you develop an understanding of the impact of that choice versus that of buying second-hand clothes over new ones, or a bike ride over a ride-share.
The climate crisis is a collective action problem. In 2018, the landmark
UN IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C made clear that we have only until 2030 to mobilize all the solutions we can, as quickly as possible. We need sweeping policy change, and we need bold corporate action. Yet the key to accelerating solutions lies with us. Consumer choices influence over 65% of global greenhouse gas emissions
Ivanova et al., 2016. Together, we have the power to create a bright, livable future for all life on earth.
Research shows that an average person can reduce their emissions by 5-25%, especially if they receive real-time information on their carbon footprint (
Jones and Kammen, 2011) (
Moran et al, 2018). We've seen some highly-committed users reduce their footprint by as much as 30-60%.
If we were all to reduce our emissions by a little, we would get a tenth of the way to achieving our global goal of cutting emissions in half by 2030, averting the worst consequences of the climate crisis. We can think of collective behavior change as buying ourselves time to shift to a fully-decarbonized society - flattening the curve of global emissions.
Behavior change is not only effective - it's one of the cost-efficient climate solutions we have. That's because consuming more responsibly is better for our wallets. Research shows that you can save hundreds of dollars per year for each ton of CO2e you shave off your carbon footprint, most notably from changing diets, traveling more sustainably, reducing energy use at home, and buying fewer, longer-lasting items (
Jones and Kammen, 2011).