29 September 2008

Follow your carbon footprints with a mobile phone

The issue of tackling climate change is continually evolving, with each new step making it easier for individuals to reduce their environmental impact.

Home solutions, recycling and of the availability of sustainable energy options are just a few examples of easy ways to reduce your impact on the environment. But travel is still one of the most important areas where you can make significant changes and the method of transport and the length of the journey are instrumental in determining how damaging your trip is to the environment.

And soon there will be a new weapon in the fight against climate change. Carbon Diem, launching in spring 2009, is a mobile phone carbon calculator that is able to identify the mode of transport being used by an individual, whilst also calculating the carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere.

The inventor of Carbon Diem, Andreas Zachariah, CEO of the Carbon Hero company, created software that uses Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) and automatically measures the speed and pattern of an individual's movement. The main advantage of this crafty device is that the user isn't required to input any information - the mobile phone performs all of the hard work for you.

The inspiration behind Carbon Diem came about from Zachariah's attempts to work out his own carbon footprint with the use of online calculators. This involved manually entering transport and journey details and proved to be a time consuming process.

The device provides the opportunity for the individual, or organisation in question to modify their behaviour in order to improve their carbon emissions rate. Furthermore, the device will be able to record a diary of the person's carbon emissions, which allows them to continuously view the extent of their emissions, and therefore influence a positive change in their environmental impact, if necessary.

To date, the software has been tested in Nokia and Blackberry phones respectively, and thus far has managed to produce accurate results in predicting the mode of transport the person is taking. It hit 100% accuracy for working out when people were on trains or planes, whilst for predicting if people were travelling on buses it was between 65-75%.

Zachariah particularly sees a place for Carbon Diem within an organisational culture; for those who are interested and indeed, committed to reducing their environmental impact and its especially useful for organisations that require employees to travel on a daily basis for work purposes.

The news that Friends of the Earth's climate campaigner, Robin Webster, favours the technology behind Carbon Diem and views it as an important breakthrough is also encouraging. For fans of the environment, and technology alike, Carbon Diem could be just the nifty new service they're looking for to help look and act a little greener.

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