CarbonWatch

Use this app to find your individual carbon footprint, see where you can improve and how you can work towards a more sustainable lifestyle. This app initiative is led by Environment Department, Chandigarh Administration with technical support provided by Sparrow Analytics. The research team has gone through peer reviewed literature and industry precedents while designing the calculation framework.

This app is perhaps first of its kind in India, a city/state govt. led project that gives citizens a mobile app to track their carbon footprint.

· How to use this app?

This is a free-to-download app that acts like a calculator and a guidance tool to find your lifestyle carbon footprint. The way it is done, a user gets to know the overall carbon footprint and also the different sectoral footprints. Using CarbonWatch is super easy.

Here’s how it works: -

a) Download and sign up with very basic user information required.

b) Once logged in, start the calculator.

c) Go step-by-step, filling up each section with the requisite data. It’s not at all complicated. Very intuitive and basic.

d) Finally, submit the numbers and the app returns you the individual carbon footprint calculated based on the inputs you fed.

e) Thereafter, look at the improvement tips to see how you can further reduce your carbon footprint.

f) Revisit the app after 2-3 weeks to recalculate and see if those improvements have had an effect on your footprint numbers.

· What exactly does this app measure?

A lot of gases contribute to the anthropogenic warming of the planet, collectively called the Greenhouse gases (GHGs), with Carbon dioxide being the foremost along with Methane and many others.

This app takes a sum total of all GHGs released due to the user’s lifestyle choices, converting them to CO2 equivalent. All GHGs are converted to their equivalent CO2 potential so as to standardize the results into a single unit and it’s also a globally accepted standard measure of GHG potential.

· But what is carbon footprint?

Carbon footprint is the generic term given to total amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) released into the atmosphere as a result of activities that have anthropogenic origins. Each individual contributes to the global sum total of all GHGs. So we can have an individual carbon footprint, country carbon footprint and finally the global carbon footprint. This app however is only for individual footprint.

· Does this app accurately and exactly measure my entire Carbon dioxide equivalent footprint?

This app gives an estimated ball park figure for your footprint. The reason it’s not an absolute exact figure, is because to calculate the exact number, a large number of independent variables would be required and that would make the app experience cumbersome and sluggish.

· Who exactly owns this app?

This app is under the administrative control of the ENVIS team at Department of Environment, Chandigarh Administration.

· How can I contact the Department of Environment, Chandigarh Administration with suggestions or to report any bugs?

Department of Environment’s ENVIS team has the administrative control of this app. You can write in to them on their email id: ch-env@nic.in