Originally published at Montara Energy Ventures.
A leading technology company, Sun Microsystems, has released a community-based carbon footprint tracker today called OpenEco.org. It’s clearly just a start, but it’s interesting in that the point is to have folks measure their activity, set goals for improvement, and track them on the website. The theory is, if you can see it, then you can do something about it. Since there is a community involved, best practices can be formed and shared across the community.
Sun has proved masterful at building communities throughout its 25 year history, but this is a slightly different animal. It’s encouraging to see a large company step up and sponsor this, but I have to wonder, who will participate? The price of participation is high – that being the entry of vast quantities of data into the system. Yes, the community participant can choose how much is private vs. public, but just the act of entry is a high price. And it’s not a one-time gig. If Sun and the community can find a way to ease this price, then there may be some community growth.
But, this much is true, if you can’t see it, you won’t do anything about it. We applaud the company for making the effort. Tweet
