New Delhi: As part of its regular
sustainability initiatives geared towards improving the ecological balance and
minimising the impact on the environment, Lotus Greens has launched a Green App
in the form of an online calculator that can track and measure your carbon footprint
and suggest ways to reduce it. A carbon footprint is the measurement of carbon
dioxide that we put into the atmosphere while going about our daily routine.
The carbon calculator can be accessed online at www.lotusgreenability.com. ,
and can also be downloaded from Google play store on your android phone.
For a real estate company whose motto is
“Responsible Urbanization”, Lotus Greens
seeks to ensure that the goals of urban development and environmental
sustainability are met. Promoting sustainable development holds out solutions
to the multitude of problems we face – from climate change and biodiversity
loss to resource and water scarcity.
The Lotus Greens carbon footprint
calculator will help people to understand how different aspects of their lifestyle
and consumption habits affect their personal carbon emissions. As it is all of
us have a carbon footprint and add to it every day of our lives. Almost
everything we do increases our footprint. But most of us may not be able to
contemplate reducing or neutralising the carbon footprint that our routine
activities generate.
By helping users to measure the
amount of carbon dioxide they create in the course of performing everyday
chores – commuting, driving, cooking, cooling or heating homes – the Lotus Green
carbon footprint calculator will make it easier to understand and evaluate the
environmental impacts of their actions. The knowledge and understanding about
the impact of carbon dioxide on the environment and how humans contribute to
creating it is not very high. This is in spite of the growing body of
scientific evidence showing that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the
environment has been increasing over the years.
According to the United Nation’s
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it is “extremely likely” that humans
and their growing carbon footprint are the dominant cause of the environment’s
increasing toxicity. Over the last decade, CO2 levels have risen by 2.9 per
cent. In 2012, developing countries like China, India and Mexico produced 59
per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, while industrialized
countries and regions like the EU, US and Russia emitted 41 per cent.
Currently, India counts among the world’s top three carbon dioxide emitters
globally: India’s CO2 emissions grew 43 percent from 2007 to 2012, to reach 596
million tons.
Increasing emissions of carbon
dioxide, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, is a lead cause of global warming,
which is making the world more prone to increased intensity and occurrence of
severe droughts, superstorms and floods.
According to various scientific reports on global warming, the incidence
of natural disasters worldwide has steadily increased, and has affected about
217 million people every year since 1990.
Not only is global warming making
the earth warmer –the period 1983-2012 was probably the warmest in the past
1,400 years –it is causing most glaciers worldwide to lose their mass. Evidence
shows that the Antarctic ice sheet is melting faster, from around 30bn tonnes a
year in the 1990s to around 147bn tonnes a year now. It is believed that rising
temperatures due to global warming are dangerously increasing the risk of
sudden glacial lake outburst floods in the Himalayan states of Uttarakhand and
Himachal Pradesh.
To stop increased flow of carbon
dioxide into the environment, the IPCC has stipulated that carbon emissions
must be reduced in the coming decades, with significant national carbon
reduction targets (up to 80% by 2050 vs 1990) being adopted by various
countries across the globe. That’s the big challenge staring us in the face and
it is here that the Lotus Green carbon calculator can
make a difference.
Our online carbon calculator is a
small step to create awareness around carbon footprint . The launch of online
calculator was accompanied by the release of a short animation film on global
warming , which has now been viewed over 85,000 times on YouTube. The
enthusiastic response to the video makes us believe that sustained long-term
reduction of carbon footprint will be within our reach if we spread the word
around.