Displaying Dynamic Carbon Footprints of Products on Mobile Phones - Ali Dada, Felix von Reischach, and Thorsten Staake
@inproceedings{dada2008,
abstract = {Several brand owners are calculating the carbon footprint of sample products and intend to make the information available to their consumers as a label on the product. A physical label on the items or on the retail shelf will not be flexible enough to show the carbon footprint because of the dynamic nature of carbon emissions and the potential difference in footprint between instances of the same product. In this demonstration, we show an alternative to a static physical label, namely an NFC-enabled mobile phone that displays the carbon footprint of tagged products. In addition to demonstrating the dynamic nature of carbon footprints, our prototype shows how consumers can be empowered with knowledge about the products they buy.},
address = {Sydney, Australia},
annote = {demo abstract. main idea is that an NFC reader phone displays the current carbon footprint for a given product. rationale is that carbon footprints are in flux, and can vary even for the same product, if originating from different places.},
author = {Dada, Ali and von Reischach, Felix and Staake, Thorsten},
booktitle = {Adjunct Proceedings of Pervasive Computing 2008: Sixth International Conference on Pervasive Computing},
editor = {Mayrhofer, R and Quigley, A and Kay, J and Kortuem, G and Ardon, S and Rukzio, E and {Vande Moere}, A and Adowd, G and Suginuma, K},
keywords = { feedback, non-domestic, poo, zfile-techmediated,zfile-techmediated},
pages = {119--121},
title = {{Displaying Dynamic Carbon Footprints of Products on Mobile Phones}},
volume = {Advances i},
year = {2008}
}
Key Points
- Carbon footprint varies across object instances
This paper is a position paper on a proposed experiment to see the impact carbon footprint has upon consumers when making buyer decisions.
The main motivation for this study, and the computer science slant, is that due to the variance in carbon footprint which depends upon shipping costs, refrigeration, place of origin, and other such factors which are unique to individual objects, paper labels of carbon footprints simply cannot show an accurate representation.
The paper proposes a mobile phone system using NFC tags on food, coupled with a database to get accurate carbon footprints for item instances.
Three main goals stand for this project:
- Allowing a consumer to easily and intuitively retrieve the carbon footprint of a product,
- Showing that different instances of similar products can have varying foot prints,
- Observing the users' feedback to the technology and collecting data that would help in measuring the technology's effect on the future habits of consumers and brand owners.
The main question I have regarding this experiment is how much does the carbon footprint of individuals items vary, and does this variance make a difference in consumer decisions - Will have to read the follow up/experimental paper for answers.