Trace, calculate, and reduce your carbon footprint

The second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic forced many to work from home. Some used the opportunity to ideate and create a business of their own. Twenty-six-year-old Sachin Sengar, for instance, used his work experience in a start-up to begin his own venture. It dealt with a pressing issue facing us today — reducing carbon footprint.

Sengar’s venture, Lowsoot, helps clients — be it individuals, or large and small organisations — measure their carbon footprint. When he set up his carbon footprint calculator online, he noticed the tremendous demand for it. In just four months he had 20,000 environment-conscious people checking on the greenhouse gases generated by their actions. Most of them decided to actively reduce the harm they were doing to the planet.

Organisations also showed interest and several big ones contacted Lowsoot to measure their carbon footprint and to take measures to reduce it. “Individuals need to reduce their footprint, but businesses are the biggest contributors to emissions and, if they want to transition to net zero by 2030, they have to first track their footprint and then decide how to reduce it,” says Sengar.

Currently the Lowsoot team is building an app on the same lines as Googlefit to help individual users. There is a different software for organisations.

How will the app function? For businesses it will have three parameters: Scope 1 and 2 will track and help tackle direct emissions from a company’s activities like production, energy consumption and logistics. Scope 3 would look at the company’s vendors, how sustainable their practices are, and the labour and supply chain issues. Sengar also hopes to help corporates deploy their CSR funds in social and green projects. “The idea is to help build a more planet-friendly environment by aiding businesses to become carbon-neutral,” he says.

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The app for carbon-conscious individuals, on the other hand, will be integrated with their activities. This would include one’s electricity bill, water usage, food consumed — vegetarian and non-vegetarian, travel, online activity, recycling habits, donations to sustainable projects, and investments in green stocks, with, of course, a few approximations.

Sengar started out by putting together energy solutions based on internet of things (IoT) technology for small properties after quitting his job with a start-up that specialised in backpacker hostels. And a year later, the young founder has been able to garner the support of experienced advisors and a tiny team of specialists who are helping him find his way. “We found that some companies spend more on energy than employee salaries,” he says. Sengar believes that if Lowsoot is able to reduce this wastage due to human negligence and optimise the functioning of equipment, half the battle would be won. But the only way to get to it, as individuals or as a company, is to track, track and track the carbon footprint.

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