Method to the Madness! Basics of the Karmbon Score
“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is wasted.” -Aesop
We want to keep this simple, yet we also strive for accuracy. So, when we score an action and say that it “saves” ## of carbon emissions, generating “good karmbon”, we’re using a bit of math and following general principles of “Life Cycle Analysis” (adding up all the +/- environmental effects). We may generalize where necessary to represent the situation as best as we can across geographies and scenarios while also keeping the inspiration flowing.
If you think that we’ve made a mistake, let us know! We thank you for caring, for helping us spread the good (and accurate) karmbon, for making this world and this project better.
Karmbon Score (10/10)
We grade each action or intervention on a scale of 0-10, where a score of 10/10 means that it’s an impactful, easy action which also saves money and has positive downstream effects.
The majority of interventions are oriented towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and are counted in carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO₂e)1 in order to have one standard unit of measure across all of these posts and in order to align with industry units.
Total Score 10/10
3/3 for carbon impact (in CO₂e)
3/3 for ease of implementation
2/2 for cost savings
2/2 for downstream savings (material, water, etc)
To increase relevance and show the power of small actions, we then multiply the impact if a quantity of people were to do this one small action, adding up to a BIG impact across society.
EX: “Karmbon score 10/10 with 100 tonnes of GHG saved if 10,000 people hang their laundry out to dry instead of using their clothes dryer!”
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Material & Water
Carbon emissions are key. But spreading Good Karmbon is about the entire spectrum of activities that can benefit our shared global environment and have knock-on effects when we all work together.
Material and Water savings also lower greenhouse gas emissions, but where the leading impact is less obvious in terms of calculatable “emissions”, we celebrate the impact using kilos (material) and liters (water) in a “Material Monday” series and the “Water Wednesday” series using related logic:
“Material Monday” Score 10/10
3/3 material savings impact
3/3 ease
2/2 cost savings
2/2 downstream savings (carbon, water, etc)
“Water Wednesday” Score 10/10
3/3 water savings impact
3/3 ease
2/2 cost savings
2/2 downstream savings (infrastructure, carbon, etc)
Footnotes:
- Using CO₂e takes the different “global warming potential” of greenhouse gases and normalizes to a common unit. For example, if we saved 1kg of methane, which has ~20x the greenhouse gas effect as carbon dioxide would be represented as 20kg of CO₂e avoided/reduced/etc. ↩︎
