CARBOMINUS
By: Tanisha Sharma
Tags: Carbon Footprint, Global Warming, Go Green, Green, Carbon Emissions

IDEA

Carbominus is a startup idea interface which calculates your carbon footprint, your electricity expenditure, and basically everything to live a greener life and adjust the settings of the user’s consumption.

For eg: If your house uses 30kwh energy and accumulates a lot of money expenditure, so the app will adjust the usage accordingly and in turn user’s electricity will cost less. Same with water and gas. It will also provide advices to user on how to live a cleaner and greener life and the application would have a section where various blogs related to greener and cleaner life would be included.

MARKET DEMAND

MarketsandMarkets forecasts the global carbon footprint management market size is expected to grow from USD 9.0 billion in 2020 to USD 12.2 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 6.2% during the forecast period. Companies are increasingly adopting the carbon footprint management software across verticals due to the need for adhering to carbon emission compliances. This has increased the demand for carbon footprint management software across industries. The increasing government initiatives across the world are expected to boost the growth of the carbon footprint management market. To reduce the carbon emissions and reach new levels of efficiency and accuracy, organizations need real-time visibility of the carbon footprint of their business operations. Hence, the demand for carbon footprint solution and services is increasing rapidly. The increasing government regulations and initiatives for reducing carbon emissions are expected to increase the demand for the carbon footprint solution in the near future.

RELEVANT PRODUCTS IN THE MARKET

Since carbon di oxide is very toxic and harmful for humans. It also increases the temperature of the Earth’s Atmosphere causing global warming which has substandard effects on the Earth. Increasing the percentage of carbon dioxide gas in the air causes suffocation of living organisms as well as global warming that threatens the existence of life on this planet, a high concentration of carbon dioxide gas causes narcosis. That is the reason why our product or our application comes into the scene, it will inform the user about how much carbon emission he/she is causing to the planet and how can the user reduce carbon emission. Also, it would have a section where users can input their facts or thoughts on how to reduce the consumption and emission of carbon that is required to lead a greener and cleaner life.

TARGET CUSTOMERS

Although this product is useful for everyone be it of any age, class, gender, region, country because carbon di oxide is harmful for all humans irrespective of their age, gender etc. To reduce the emission of carbon which in turn will help the user to reduce their electricity bill, water and gas bill is the main aim of this project. It targets every customer around the world but is targeted more towards people who run large scale industries and those who are below the poverty line because they are the ones who suffer the most because of inadequate health conditions and not having enough money to lead a decent life. Also, people below the poverty line would be benefitted because our product will help them to reduce their electricity, water and gas bill and they won’t have to spend more than half of their little income on these bills. People who run large scale industries will also be largely benefitted with this because these industries are the ones which emit the largest amount of carbon di oxide causing harmful effects to humans and planet Earth.

REQUIRED EXPERTISE

The math and methodologies behind this calculator include a lot of science and math. We also base some of the calculations on the idea of a “weighted population.” This assumes users living and using water, energy, and waste.

For this we will have to research online for carbon emissions of other factors you may want to include. This could be public transit, cars, iPods, cell phones, books, computers, beer, red cups, clothes, etc. This will be the most labor-intensive part of the project.

For e.g.: For calculating the carbon footprint of the devices that mostly students and teens use like iPad, textbooks, laptops etc. For these stuffs we will use the following formulae. In order to calculate the carbon of electronics like laptops and phones we found the amount of kg CO2e used for a 4-year lifespan of the product. By asking how many years the user had owned the phone or laptop we were able to get a rough approximation of the carbon emissions. For textbooks, we found separate amounts of kg CO2e to make hard cover and soft cover books. We then multiplied by the amount of each kind of book the user buys per quarter. In order to factor in clothing, we found the average kg CO2e it takes to create a kg of clothing. We then multiplied that by the average weight of a new article of clothing and how many articles of clothing the user purchases/month.

Question: Approximately how many soft cover books do you buy/quarter?

Input Answer: Allow user to input

Question: Approximately how many hard cover books do you buy/quarter?

Input Answer: Allow user to input

CONVERSION FOR TEXTBOOKS: want to calculate (1) (kg CO2)/school yr. and (2) (kg CO2)/day used from textbooks. User inputs number of textbooks.

{(# soft cover (5.00 kg CO2) + #hard cover (10.2 kg CO2)) / (books in a quarter school yr school)} x (3 quarters / school yr) = (kg CO2 / school yr) {(# soft cover (5.00 kg CO2) + #hard cover (10.2 kg CO2)) / (books in a quarter)} x (1 quarter / 33 weeks) x (1 week / 7 days) = (kg CO2 / per day)

OUTPUT: Output the (1) (kg CO2e)/school year and (2) (kg CO2e)/ day accumulated from all different areas of consumption

Similarly, we can do math calculations for carbon emitted during transportation keeping in mind the different means of transport. We can also calculate for water, water bottle, kindle, iPad, partying, trash, food, energy etc. And add up the total results to find out the total carbon di oxide emitted during these processes.

After the research and doing the math next comes the process of putting your calculator online and testing it out. Open Source (MIT/GPL) code to create our calculator except for the graph (which also free for non-commercial use). Find a host for the site, and input our data to the open-source codes, and before we know it you will have a working carbon footprint calculator for the use.

Next comes the step of testing the calculator and releasing it. It’s important to make sure it is user friendly and easy to understand, because when it comes down to it — this calculator needs to be fun and accurate so that people will actually use it! After making the corrections based on their feedback it can be finally released for the public to use it and benefit from it.

SOLUTION

We need to understand our goals and requirements and understand our approach and capabilities. We need to confirm requirements and the business functions of our Carbominus website and to propose an approach with a scope, budget, and schedule. Setting mutual expectations is the key to a successful project and relationship. Good communication is required to set, meet, and maintain expectations. The proposal, project plan, and invoices should align all expectations regarding the website design project.

Scope, budget, and schedule are clearly defined and visible to our team and clients.

Changes to any goals or scope during the project process are appended to the project plan and approved by the client.

All invoices should reflect the approved payment schedule and budget increases.

The combination of project goals and expected results drive our team to strategic decisions for every web design and content deliverable in our process.

SEO and Content analysis for attracting traffic

analysis for attracting traffic Sitemap for content structure towards visitor goals

Wireframes that define usability and content layout and drive visitor conversions

Designs that reflect your brand essence

Development plans for content management

Once the site is launched, enhancements will likely happen to meet business changes and constantly improve the website. Such as:

Help desk questions

Testing and fixes to technical problems

Updates to the CMS

Enhancements to the website

Hosting issues

ESTIMATED BUDGET

Total budget required for this project would be 4 human resources, which would include 1 tech-guy/girl who can work with putting the calculator and the complete project online as a whole, 1 UI/UX designer who would design the complete website accordingly and 2 more who could work on the labor-intensive research part. Using open-source code won’t cost anything and for graphs and adding tips and links of blogs would also be free of cost. Deploying and hosting the website on the internet would cost around 1200 bucks per month for hosting and around 700 bucks for buying the domains for a year. Next comes the marketing of the product, for this, we can run Instagram ads and Facebook ads to raise awareness about carbon emission and our website which would calculate carbon footprint and would give the user some tips to live a greener and cleaner life.

The average Instagram sponsored ads or advertisement CPC (cost per click) costs between 36.69 INR– 146.75 INR. The average CPC for businesses to advertise in India varies from Rs 0.51 to Rs 2.26.

The testers of our beta product would be awarded with a LinkedIn tester badge so that won’t cost us anything.

PRODUCT PRICING

For selling the product to customers we would attract them by informing and raising awareness among them about how carbon di oxide is harmful for us and what are the tips and tricks using which users can lead a greener and cleaner life. The plan of pricing would be a monthly subscription thing which would include getting tips and full detailed report straight into the user’s inbox. The monthly subscription would be set to cost around 99 bucks per month which is quite affordable and can be bought by almost everyone. When the user contributes to our carbon offset program, he protects forests that are critical for:

Absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere Conserving biodiversity Sustaining livelihoods for millions of people Helping indigenous communities build resilience to climate change

It could also include advising governments on sound policies — Carbominus advises on actions to ensure that ecosystems and their services are valued; that vulnerable populations are given the tools they need to adapt to climate change; and that the frameworks needed to support these policies are implemented.

MARKETING PLAN

To market the product to our audience using social media advertisement campaigns are the best possible way. Using Instagram and Facebook ads to raise awareness among people about how harmful and toxic carbon di oxide gas is and how can people reduce the emission of CO2 gas to live a cleaner and a greener life at the end of the day and for sustainability of natural resources for future generations. Most people these days are active on social media which would help us to make our product reach most of the people across the world on the internet. To reach the industries and people below the poverty line we can run offline campaigns about how our product can help people BPL to get a cut in their monthly electricity bill and how industrialists can reduce their carbon emission.

RISK ANALYSIS

When we talk about risk analysis, things can go wrong during the labor-intensive task of calculating how much each product affects the carbon emission, since this is a very effortful task which involves a lot of research so there is a chance of getting things wrong because the human resource working on this part might get overwhelmed with the amount of work and effort he will have to put in. Rest the implementation and launching won’t be a difficult task once the base task is completed. The base task needs to be done accurately as the whole startup idea lays on this stone.

MILESTONE AND TIMELINE

Time estimated for the entire project would be around 7–8 months, planning and researching about the math and methodology of this product would take around 2 months completely, implementing all the things together and putting it online would take around 1.5 to 2 months, next comes marketing the product and testing and launching it would take 3–4 months.

Here is the Gantt chart that shows the complete timeline of CARBOMINUS.

Timeline of Carbominus

Our goal would be to stick to the timeline and complete the project and make people aware of the toxic effects of carbon di oxide and how is it harmful for for us, and how can humans reduce the carbon emission.