Pawprint - Carbon Footprint Behaviour Change Data
Developing a robust model for applying the impact of lifestyle choices to personal carbon footprint on an ongoing basis
In 2019, prior to the global pandemic, concern around the prospect of climate breakdown reached a peak of intensity. Growing alarm in the scientific and sustainability community spread into the public consciousness of the UK more than they had in previous years. IPCC Special Reports (Global Warming of 1.5 °C 2018, followed by Climate Change & Land and Ocean & Cryosphere in 2019) painted a grim picture, and there were significant documentary releases that year, including Our Planet, which did not shy away from presenting the stark effects of global warming and biodiversity loss. A reinvigorated protest movement led largely by Extinction Rebellion captured the world’s attention and forced climate action into the mainstream, and the effects of climate breakdown were being noticed by ordinary people through more frequent extreme weather events.
Stakeholders
Client team 6, user research pool 50+
Size
c.70 consultancy days over eight months
Project Type
Data modelling, personal carbon footprint research, user experience
Year
2019
The founding team at Pawprint wanted to tap into this groundswell of collective interest and concern and turn it into positive climate action at a grand scale, by harnessing well proven techniques of behaviour change delivered through personal apps. Being able to assess your carbon footprint as a one off exercise wasn’t new, but up to that point, no-one had successfully brought a mass-market tracking and improvement tool to sustainability in the same way that these had been successfully applied to exercise, diet, money management, sleep and other personal habits. The Pawprint team needed advice on digital product development, data modelling and sustainability.
We worked with Pawprint from the very beginning of their journey, and embedded ourselves in their team to help them bring their vision to life from an initial concept to a fully-realised product. We got stuck in to a wide range of start-up activities including research, grant-writing, engaging with experts and external partners, such as working with the team at Small World Consulting to understand carbon footprint science, helping to run user research events in collaboration with Nile HQ, and getting stuck into the business of creating technical specifications for the underlying data models that support lifestyle data and carbon footprint of lifestyle choices across diet, which were ultimately implemented by Verse (one of our many collaborations with them).
Project Retrospective
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Three years after launching, Pawprint had achieved great results for their customers, with 195,000 climate actions pledged by users, 2,569 tonnes of carbon saved, and co-benefit cost savings from energy efficiency and waste reduction of £420,000. The Pawprint team won’t stop until millions of people are empowered to understand and take control of their personal carbon footprint.
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In terms of the product itself, the key challenge came around a really difficult data model - combining both personal carbon footprint with a data model for ‘lifestyle’ across key categories such as diet, travel and home where the carbon footprint activity model is quite different. This all needed to be structured in a way which enabled behaviour change impacts to be translated into carbon footprint improvements on a person by person level, supporting incremental habit-based lifestyle changes.
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We joined this project very soon after Treligan was founded, and really for the pure joy of working with such a committed, focused team on a grand challenge solution. We supported various aspects of their early operation and broadly speaking helped out with whatever needed doing to bring the idea to life. This was a really fast paced environment with a funding runway, so there was pressure to deliver, but the outcomes speak for themselves and for the dedication of Christian and the Pawprint team.
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Working with the Pawprint team was an amazing opportunity and experience in itself. This also really deepened our understanding of personal carbon footprint analysis, and the importance of public engagement and education in relation to the really key changes we can make to reduce our impact on the environment. There were important lessons in how to engage with different people to relate carbon reduction with other priorities, be those financial, health or social. We’ve subsequently applied this knowledge of carbon footprint to projects for NHS England and multiple Carbon Literacy projects delivered during the creation of the Speak Carbon training network.
