CarbonHero Xmas lets users enjoy a carbon neutral holiday season
Berlin, Germany (PRWEB UK) 6 December 2016 -- Who doesn’t overindulge a little at Christmas time? It’s the season for traveling home, coming together as families, enjoying fine food and delighting in lavish decorations. But all these cherished activities cause significant carbon emissions and put an enormous burden on the climate.
The carbon offsetting app CarbonHero launches a special Christmas Edition on the iOS App Store that calculates user specific holiday carbon emissions - by asking just nine simple questions. A personalized eco snow globe illustrates the holiday related elements a user can offset directly within the app. By offering two compensation categories (Forrest Protection and Renewable Energies) the app makes offsetting quick and easy. Based on the users preference the app selects an accredited climate action project to purchase the needed amount of officially certified climate compensation certificates. As part of the service the certificates are automatically invalidated, which assures users that their Christmas emissions are reliably balanced.
Andreas Riedel, CarbonHero founder, said: "Emitting less would be the best way to stop climate change, but we all know that it can be hard to abstain from beloved traditions. Therefore, our approach focuses not on judging users for their action and telling them what or what not to do. Instead we want to empower users to take action and balance their own climate damaging emissions. Everyone can act now: Step by step - one Christmas at a time!"
The average UK citizen emits 324kg of CO2 (carbon) by the most basic holiday activities alone. When adding emissions from travel, vacations, or extensive Christmas lights displays the carbon amount can easily reach between one or two metric tons per person. In the United Kingdom Christmas specific carbon emissions alone can contribute up to 15% of the individual carbon footprint based on the national annual carbon footprint of 9.33 tons CO2 per person.
CarbonHero Xmas is available as free download on the App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1180082090?mt=8
To help users reduce holiday emissions CarbonHero posts daily tips for a greener Christmas as an Eco Advent Calendar on its social channels.
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Notes to the Editor
How does CarbonHero calculate the carbon footprint?
The CarbonHero footprint calculator uses data from scientific studies and climate databases in combination with consumption statistics from official sources, such as the German Federal Environment Agency, eurostat at the European Commission, the US Environmental Protection Agency or the OECD (among many). The result is an amount of carbon (CO2 and equivalents) in kilograms.
How does carbon offsetting work?
The determined amount of carbon is compensated by purchasing climate certificates from accredited compensation projects from the so called "Voluntary Market." We require the highest levels of certification from a project and at this moment accept: Gold Standard (supported by the WWF) and VCS Verified Carbon Standard. At the end of the purchase process certificates are automatically invalidated to ensure users are making the intended impact and prohibiting re-use or re-sale of a certificate. The invalidation process is audited by third party TÜV Austria.
CarbonHero is packed with German Gründlichkeit!
How do compensation projects reduce carbon from the atmosphere?
Projects from the Forrest Protection category preserve or reforest endangered forests, typically in (sub)-tropical areas where trees can bind carbon most efficiently.
Projects from the Renewable Energies category produce energy from renewable sources (e.g. wind, solar or water power) that otherwise would have been produced by burning fossil fuels.
Andreas Riedel, Benefacto GmbH, http://carbonheroapp.com, +49 15115674677, [email protected]
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