NexGenCarbon is a coalition of developers aiming to educate the public about climate change, involving individuals through application platform interfaces (APIs) that demonstrate how to limit their carbon footprints, and rewarding the communities that take the most initiative and exhibit model behavior. Our website is divided into these three sections.
Within the “Educate” section, we provide a pollution tracker that allows users to monitor air quality throughout the globe, a carbon tracker that provides individuals with information regarding specific zip codes’ carbon emissions (in the U.S.), and a forum/blog that serves to connect people for the purpose of creating a global community dedicated to stopping climate change. This is forum/blog is an online version of our app, which is available on the Android and iOS app stores.
The “Involve” section targets specific groups of people (e.g. commuters, homeowners) and informs them what they can be doing to limit their carbon footprint. The implementation of a novel API from the University of California at Berkley provides our users with a tool that helps them calculate their carbon footprint through an interactive questionnaire, which at the end offers users the option to pledge to change their carbon footprint, with the addition of a dropdown that outlines the steps to take for each specific pledge.
In the “Reward” section we display community rankings, in real time, of the cleanest, greenest communities worldwide. We also aim to help connect government projects with private industries. Here we post information provided by government websites about initiatives to stop climate change. Below the government projects, we also inform the public about private initiatives, such as recycling or solar programs. The purpose of the rewards section is to help further motivate communities to become greener, as it makes their neighborhoods more desirable, increases property values, and provide other benefits of green living.
The Pollution Tracker is here to help you check pollution that has been done and what is being done as the time progresses to see and show outcomes of various trials and error. The Pollution that has been will be uploaded a monitored 24/7, the data obtained will be compared with other data that are being recorded in near by locations. These data are then compared through a series of graphs of previous data to current.
Source: UC Berkeley CoolClimate Network, Average Annual Household Carbon Footprint (2013).