By Andrew Liszewski
Like Ben Storan with his Personal Wind Turbines, Andreas Zachariah was also one of the winners of the 2007 BSI (British Standards Institute) Sustainability Design Awards. But instead of harnessing wind power Andreas’ invention is designed as a wake up call to get people to understand what their impact on the environment really is. It’s called the ‘Carbon Hero’ and it’s basically a keychain sized device that’s used to keep track of a person’s ‘carbon footprint’ when it comes to the modes of transportation they use.
Carbon Hero™ calculates the exact carbon footprint of the user’s transport habits by identifying different forms of transport taken as a user travels through ‘space’, by virtue of their relative location, velocity and the pattern of their activity. All of this comes in a unit the size of a key ring.
Once gathered, the data is downloaded to software on a PC or mobile phone which displays the amount of carbon used and the amount of credits needed to be purchased in order to offset the amount used.
Andreas felt that while people have become more conscious and educated about the products they buy being environmentally friendly they’re less concerned when it comes to public or private transportation. By giving them tangible data on how their own transportation habits affect the environment they’ll be more likely to change those habits in an attempt to improve their ‘footprint.’
