If you’re environmentally-conscious, yet overwhelmed. If you want to make a difference, but feel helpless. Or perhaps climate anxiety has taken hold. Joro app is here to help.
“Joro, from Old Norse jǫrð, or ‘earth,’ is the protector and personification of the Earth in Norse mythology.” The name summarizes the goal of the company, which is to empower individual citizens to see tangible ways their purchasing decisions can positively, or negatively, affect the planet.
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In short: Joro is an app that tracks your spending habits and provides a report on the impact of your purchasing decisions. Called The Carbonizer, Joro’s proprietary technology calculates emissions data based on your purchases and converts it into an estimate of your personal carbon footprint. The app serves several other goals too.
Increased understanding of carbon footprint
The makers of the Joro app understand the key to making substantial change for the environment is through education. Every product we buy comes with a carbon weight. Whether it grows naturally or is a product manufactured from other materials, every item is resource consumptive. Additionally, it requires resources to transport, store and dispose of those same items. Joro calculates the carbon footprint based on all these factors and provides information about better purchasing options.
Guidance about high-impact activities
This process provides a visual of your top carbon producers so it’s easier to make changes. The algorithm considers your lifestyle and location. It’s meant to be a guiding factor and educational tool rather than a 100% accurate measurement. If you can see, for example, your food purchasing, gas consumption or electrical bill are high-impact, it can instigate the shift to better food decisions or fuel efficiency.
Support towards a net-zero lifestyle
In addition to education, Joro outlines ways you can offset your carbon creation. While it’s always better to limit carbon emissions in the first place, offsets are investments in programs that help clean up the environment.
Joro analyzes countless offset programs and identifies the most efficient and beneficial ones in several areas. Programs are evaluated on criteria such as transparency, effectiveness of carbon storage and verifiable, quantifiable results. The team then creates an ever-growing portfolio of programs that fit the stringent criteria. Current projects adopted into the portfolio protect and restore forests, store carbon in soil through regenerative agriculture techniques, support open ocean kelp farming to permanently store carbon in seaweed and sequester carbon deep underground in the form of carbon-rich bio-oils.
Connecting a community of change
Joro is built on the idea that many small changes lead to big changes when each individual does their part. The goal to limit global warming is a multi-faceted campaign.
“We need a broad arsenal of climate solutions, and we need them ASAP,” said Joro. “Over the next 30 years, we need to balance investments in cost-efficient solutions that avoid, reduce or remove carbon now (e.g. clean cookstoves, infrastructure, forestry, soil) with longer-term, pricier solutions that store and sequester carbon permanently (e.g. direct air capture, biomass carbon removal and storage).”
With this in mind, every effort is beneficial, especially when multiplied by the power of many. Joro asks everyone to do what they can, from eliminating purchases of items with plastic packaging to donating to carbon offset projects. No single person can do everything, but every person can do something. This is the power of community.
Images via Joro
