The new carbon footprint calculator helping shape climate policy
After seeing explosive popularity in Finland, the PSLifestyle app is rolling out to cities across Europe. Its makers say its ability to create a two-way dialogue between consumers and policymakers will play a key role in removing common obstacles to sustainable behaviour.
Type ‘carbon footprint calculator’ into Google and you’ll get hundreds of hits. From 75-question-long deep dives from well-known environmental organisations, to smaller multiple-choice quizzes put together by budding data scientists, there’s a huge range of options available to help you gauge your personal environmental impact.
Generally-speaking, however, these platforms operate on a one-way basis. Sustainably-minded folk enter their information and receive their calculation – often derived from generalised datasets – alongside some tips and advice for reducing their footprint. Now, however, a new app is being piloted that’s not only tailormade to the user’s locale, but which identifies barriers to sustainability to produce datasets that could tangibly impact climate policy throughout Europe and beyond.
The PSLifestyle (‘positive sustainable lifestyle’) app ostensibly operates like any other calculator. Users are guided through simple questions across four categories: home, transport, shopping and food, and at the end of the quiz are presented with their final carbon calculation. So far, so standard. Alongside this calculation, users are presented with a list of potential remedies for reducing their footprint, including the emissions impact (in kg) each action could have.
But here’s the USP. Users are then asked if they’ll consider taking up these actions – which range from major lifestyle changes such as going vegan to simple tasks such as switching to a renewable energy supplier – and crucially, if not, why not. Users can select from a range of reasons, such as ‘It’s too expensive’ or ‘Services/facilities are not available in my area’. These answers then feed into an anonymous data pool that will help researchers and policymakers identify and take action on pain points for consumers, with the aim of moving Europe closer to its goal of climate neutrality.
“The test provides insight for everyone,” says project lead Markus Terho. “Users get to see quantitative information about their carbon footprint and clear visuals on the way suggested actions add up together, while policymakers can see what the barriers to action really are.”
Users can also see how their efforts stack up against the national average and compare averages between countries. “There’s also the option to share your results with friends,” says Terho, who adds that competition can be a powerful motivator.
Personalised results
Jussi Nevanlinna, who joined the PSLifestyle team after working with the likes of Nokia and Microsoft, says a lot of work has gone into making the calculator personalised and relevant to the varying lifestyles of Europe. “A lot of calculators use data based on European averages, or even global averages, and that can skew results, so people might think ‘Oh wow, my footprint isn’t that bad’ or ‘Oh wow, it’s much worse than I thought’ and then they feel overwhelmed,” he explains. “The questions on PSLifestyle are specific to the country each user is in, and were designed in collaboration with local people to account for differences in lifestyle, native language quirks and so on.”
Some of these variations include questions for Finns about their sauna habits, questions for Italians about moped ownership, and questions for Germans about geothermal energy – common trends in these nations but much less so elsewhere. But the team has been mindful to ensure the data can be extrapolated effectively. “There’s about an 80/20 split of universal to country-specific questions, otherwise the data wouldn’t be comparable,” says Nevanlinna.
Tapping into consumer curiosity
The app is borne of a five-year project by Finnish innovation fund, Sitra. Founded more than 50 years ago, Sitra’s objectives include economic growth and sustainable development, with climate change a key focal point.
“Early on it was clear that people wanted to take action to be more sustainable, but they needed some help and support in getting started,” says Nevanlinna. He explains that the first iteration of the PSLifestyle app was a simple quiz for the Finnish population, featuring basic questions and tips hinged on saving energy and reducing energy bills. “It was just called ‘Lifestyle Test’, so there were no obvious environmental connotations,” he says, pointing to the advent of viral Buzzfeed-esque quizzes as a real catalyst for its success. “People love taking quizzes. ‘What kind of person are you?’ ‘Will you have a happy marriage?’ People inherently want to know more about themselves.”
This approach paid off. After Terho appeared on a brief TV news segment to talk about the project, an influx of interest caused the website to crash. To date, nearly 1.5 million Finns (population 5.5 million) have taken the original quiz.
“The interest in it was huge, so that’s when we applied for the European Union Horizon funding that allowed us to roll out the pilots in Estonia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, and Turkey,” says Terho. “Now we have organisations from all over the world – Canada, Costa Rica, Hong Kong and others in Europe – saying ‘Hey, we want to bring this app to our country’.”
Amassing the data
It’s still early days for this iteration of the PSLifestyle app, which was only launched in the pilot cities in September, so Nevanlinna and Terho aren’t able to comment on any key data findings yet. However, based on the original data from the Finnish quiz, there are some hopeful trends emerging.
“We’ve got around 30,000 individual calculations already logged,” says Terho. “We originally anticipated users would commit to actions targeting around a 3-7% reduction in their footprints, but it’s actually been around 30%.”
Of course, there are no guarantees that people will follow through on the actions they say they will – as is the case with online quizzes, people are simply curious a lot of the time – but the conversion rates of users tapping through the app to obtain their final carbon action plan is encouragingly high. “It’s around 10%, compared to other app averages of around 3%,” says Terho. “Even if users don’t follow the advice completely, they’re now aware of the things they could be doing, which is an important part of it.”
Looking ahead
What Nevanlinna and Terho are particularly excited about, however, is the app’s potential for policy change. “We know that people want to make changes but there are often barriers to them doing so,” says Terho. “The data from the app will show policymakers exactly what those challenges are, and create a sense of urgency around an issue. If they can see that 100,000 people want to do something but can’t because of a commonly-cited obstacle, policymakers know where to direct their efforts.”
The value of this data is why the PSLifestyle team is committed to keeping the open-source app low cost and scalable. “Not every team in every country has a lot of money, time or technical skills,” says Nevanlinna. “It’s built on standard technology – Google Sheets and a robust recommendation matrix – so it can be used by everyone.”
But there’s a lot of potential for growth. The team envisions expanding the tips and advice section into a community information hub, where users can access deeper support and guidance on the changes recommended, such as recipe ideas for vegan meals, or databases for local services and facilities. Comparison charts between nations could be brought down to micro level, enabling users to see how their efforts stack up against their neighbours’, and – funding dependent – Nevanlinna would like to see an AI and machine-learning component introduced to give users’ prioritised tips as part of a dynamic action plan, which adapts to logged actions and changing user circumstances.
At this juncture, however, the team is focused on capturing data to present to potential stakeholders. In Spring next year, they will be holding co-creation workshops around Europe, meeting with local and national policymakers, researchers, and organisations to demonstrate the actions needed to support users to live more sustainably, thereby driving meaningful change throughout their regions and sectors.
“There are many complex barriers to creating a more sustainable society, and action needs to come from two sides – from people and from policy,” says Nevanlinna. “The PSLifestyle app helps connect them both, allowing them to help each other. Through this approach we can overcome the barriers.”
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