Background
Despite the ever-present nature of cell phones in our lives (and the associated apps we rely on), most people don’t think of their cell phones as a tool to take meaningful climate action. After all, there is an increasing awareness of the importance of community action and interpersonal communication about climate change, so how much of a difference can a person make by downloading another application?
As it turns out, there are a few companies that have built environmental apps that attempt to engage their users to take action in both the physical and digital worlds. By encouraging more conscious spending, providing quick daily sustainable tips, or shining a light on deforestation, the three apps I’m going to try out have attempted to change our collective futures through education and incremental behavior shifts.
This week, I am going to document my interactions with the apps Commons, AWorld, and Ecosia. Each day, I’ll note the content I see, how it influences my actions, and whether I think the app plays a positive role in the environmental movement.
Monday, July 15th
- This evening, I purchased a couple of ingredients for dinner at Target and received a Commons notification urging me to consider other options, although all of the stores suggested were online retailers, making them much less accessible to just swing by and grab items for dinner.
- I considered going on Amazon after work to check out Prime deals and see if anything would be useful for my upcoming move, but I recalled what I had learned on Commons about the carbon footprint of Amazon and the myriad related issues, and I decided that I would spend some time on Facebook marketplace to look for furniture items, instead.
- Even though the notifications urging me to shop more sustainably are useful in making me reconsider small, thoughtless purchases, I feel like I’ve derived the most value from Commons through thinking and learning about the highest impact ways to, well, reduce my impact: walking or biking instead of driving, investing my money in banks that aren’t in the “Dirty Dozen,” eating plant-based, and flying less.
Tuesday, July 16th
- I decided to start by trying out AWorld’s carbon footprint calculator and compare it with the one offered by Commons. The questions and layout of the survey were nearly identical, which suggests that there’s a standard for these calculations, and although they can never be perfectly accurate, users who are new to tracking their footprint get an identical introduction to different platforms.
- The “stories” format is also very similar to how Commons sets up its articles. I do like how AWorld seems to have more daily content and stories on more specific topics, whereas I made it through most of the Commons articles I could read for points pretty quickly yesterday. Along with the long list of action items that I’ll dive into later this week, AWorld feels like a better option for fresh, daily usage.
Wednesday, July 17th
- I have been using Ecosia as my search engine and browser on my phone for over a year, so I’m quite familiar with the functionality and ethos of the app. However, I thought it would be worthwhile to refamiliarize myself with all of the features that have become habitual or overlooked as I’ve been using them
- The basic idea of Ecosia is that they promise to use a portion (around 80%) of their ad revenue generated through searches to plant trees. They have projects all over the world that they fund with this money, but the company doesn’t plant the trees directly. Therefore, it’s difficult to get detailed information on the quality of every project, and the “45 searches to plant a tree” is an estimate.
- With a variety of certifications and disclosures on its spending, the company hasn’t been caught funding irresponsible or negligent tree planting offset projects, so I don’t think there’s any harm in using this search engine instead of another.
- That being said, Ecosia doesn’t encourage its users to actively change their behavior beyond giving some search results a letter rating (A, B, C, etc.) to indicate that, in some way, that website is an environmentally friendly choice. I think Ecosia is a low-barrier way to make your phone use a little more eco-friendly, but AWorld and Commons have a much greater ability to influence bigger lifestyle changes.
Thursday, July 18th
- I dedicated today to explore Commons’ data about my purchasing habits. A “Progress” tab on the app makes it easy to explore my total emissions for each month, emissions by category, and the percentage of my spending that is sustainable, at least by their definition. My total carbon footprint for July so far is down 25% from last month, with the highest categories being Utilities, Food & Drink, and Goods & Services.
- They estimate that 3% of my purchases are sustainable, which feels like a low estimate because Commons can’t get very granular beyond their limited list of “sustainable” brands. Shopping at the food co-op or shopping at a small secondhand store aren’t picked up as “sustainable” by their algorithm
- My favorite part of the analysis is actually looking at the carbon footprint estimates for each purchase and gaining more intuition for how each category roughly contributes to my overall total. However, it’s very interesting that Commons encourages you to spend money on an offset through their app as another financial tie-in to the simple tracking capabilities.
Friday, July 19th
- I decided to spend today working to complete as many of AWorld’s actions as possible. Here are a few I was able to do:
- Eat a vegetarian meal (x3): This one was built in for me, since I’m already vegetarian! Each meal is estimated to save 6.59 kg of CO2e.
- Recycle plastic: After finishing a container of peanut butter, I removed the flat plastic lid (they aren’t recyclable in my area), made sure that the tub was close to clean, and put it in the recycling — 0.316 kg CO2e saved is their estimate.
- Unsubscribe from newsletters you don’t read: This one was an initially surprising but important reminder to remain mindful of my digital footprint. Not only did I subscribe from 2 newsletters, but I also worked to clean out my email inbox. They estimated 0.07 CO2e saved for each newsletter.
- I really like how AWorld gives you the carbon footprint of each action (again, this is only an estimate), has a litany of different options, includes a description of the reasoning behind each action, and encourages users to share the actions they log with their friends.
Conclusion & Next Steps
While I don’t think that I’ll be checking Commons every time I make a purchase, the information I learned from the app will certainly be in the back of my mind, particularly when I’m shopping online or sharing sustainable lifestyle tips with friends. I also like the idea of using Commons in conjunction with AWorld to start building more of an intuition around the most impactful actions, both on the positive and negative sides. Ecosia has been part of my routine for awhile now, and I’m happy to continue using it as my default browser on both my phone and computer.
I would recommend that anyone interested in using an app to build more sustainable habits should download either Commons or AWorld, spend a few minutes each day working through some actions and browsing the app, and decide how the information changes your habits and perspective. If you are fine with switching up your browser, give Ecosia a try! And remember: at the risk of sounding too cliche, the world beyond your phone screen is what matters in work to tackle climate change. Look for ways to take action, talk to others in your life, and engage with the community. If these apps are the guiding force for these changes, then I think they do a lot of good.
