Helping communities to calculate their environmental footprint
Posted on 24 November 2011
The SEI team at York hopes that Reap Petite will contribute to the new wave of “Citizen Science” where people can better understand, and contribute to scientific research, by helping to collect and input data.
Users can join groups set up by communities, such as schools, clubs, workplaces, to compare their individual or household carbon and ecological footprints with others in their group, and the UK average. REAP Petite asks questions about users’ consumption activities, including energy use, travel, the food and goods they consume, and their activities, to build a full picture of a household’s impact.
Users can observe in real time the impacts that different activities and pledges have on their footprint
Dr Chris West
A key feature is the pledges section which suggests ways that users can decrease their footprints through measures including home improvements or changing behaviour. Pledges have a direct impact on users’ carbon footprints and can be compared with original individual or group results.
Dr Chris West, of SEI at York said: “Users can observe in real time the impacts that different activities and pledges have on their footprint. We hope that REAP Petite will collect data across the country which can be used, anonymously, to inform science, research, policies and practices in the future.”
An early beta version of the tool was used to support projects including the York and North Yorkshire Green Neighbourhood Challenge. SEI’s Dr Gary Haq, coordinator of York Green Neighbourhood Challenge said: “The tool successfully helped six neighbourhood teams in York to identify which actions they could take to reduce their impact on the planet and their pocket. Now other community groups can do the same.”
Notes to editors:
- To find out more about REAP Petite, go to www.reap-petite.com
- REAP Petite was built and designed by SEI in partnership with Isotoma, a York-based web development company which has a number of University of York graduates on its workforce.
- REAP Petite is SEI branded but builds on previous work providing data for other online calculators such as WWF. It is based on the SEI-developed REAP Suite of models which has been used to provide policy advice across the UK and overseas.
- To find out more about the Stockholm Environment Institute at the University at York, go to www.york.ac.uk/sei/
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