CarbonGuru is designed to integrate into your existing workflows and surfaces — meeting you where you already are, and working for you in the background as directed.
Even with all the message-driven tools and spaces that have come online in personal and business life over the past 25 years — Slack, every social platform, and any productivity app with some kind of notification — email remains an active channel for a large part of the digital universe.
The design principle comes together in daily experience for CarbonGuru users as email workflow integration: automated scanning for business and personal expenses (in Gmail, after setting up secure access), asynchronous carbon footprinting and climate impact analysis for all the items identified in invoices and receipts, and composing baskets of matching preferred offsets for one-click purchase.
I had the chance to see that loop play out earlier this week.
This first screenshot shows the weekly summary I receive from the CarbonGuru platform listing purchases found by scanning my linked Gmail account: three emails from recognizable merchants — Apple and the Sony PlayStation Network.
Simply replying to the summary email triggers the detailed carbon analysis: fetching the messages via the Gmail API, feeding them to the full analysis pipeline, getting quotes for matching offsets, and more.
This second image shows the completed carbon footprint analysis returned to my inbox: three items — media services and subscriptions — identified, with a total estimated footprint of 4.2 kg of carbon. That’s $1.13 of climate impact I can offset with my preferred carbon projects and suppliers for the raw sum of $0.09.
This high ratio of avoided impact to low cost of avoidance — approximately 13x — is typical. Also typical is the low proportion of offset cost as a percentage of the items’ purchase price: here less than one-quarter of one percent.
.09, removal cost .21, with a per-email breakdown” class=”wp-image-13586″/>Clicking the Offset CO₂e button in the results email populated my CarbonGuru cart with a matching set of offsets. The screenshot shows the rounded amount of carbon offsets purchased in whole kilograms as 5 kg, for a cost of — wait for it — $0.13.
.13″ class=”wp-image-13587″/>Here’s the certificate for the retired credits.
And the carbon footprint details, showing the individual footprints as offset today.
.65 climate impact, per-item footprints for The Guardian and Crunchyroll, offset status marked offset with the banner: this session has been offset” class=”wp-image-13591″/>It’s a complete analysis and offsetting workflow embedded into the existing email channel and surfaces.