Impact Calculation

How do we calculate your impact?

Almost every sustainable action has a real-world impact. That impact is often fairly small on its own, but when actions are done consistently and combined with others in your organization doing the same, the impact adds up.

Actions are categorized in one of three labels, which affects how their impact is calculated over time.

Investment Actions: An Investment Action is something done once, or very infrequently, that results in lasting impact over time. This is something like installing a smart thermostat or solar panels. These actions can be logged once, and then they are mastered. The user will continue to get impact for logging this action.
Discrete Actions: Discrete actions are actions that are not necessarily easy to make a habit or easy for the impact to be estimated continuously. This might be something irregular like shopping or selling to a thrift store, looking for products with recycled materials, checking your tire pressure, etc.
Habitual Actions: Once the action is mastered, the user is assumed to have made a habit out of it. The user will then earn daily credit for that action’s impact unless they go for a period without logging. Then the impact credit will stop until the user starts logging it again.

Each action’s impact differs depending on where you live and your particular circumstances (home size, commute length, etc). Assuming a set of particular circumstances, our team has researched these actions and established an estimated typical impact for each action. Every individual user’s specific impact will vary from the typical impact, but with the high number of users, it averages out. All the calculations, documentation, and resources used to calculate the impact can be viewed here.To sum it up – JouleBug has calculated lots of small impacts. When you log an action, we give you impact credit depending on the type of action. We keep a running total for you, your friends, and your communities.Through your use of Services, we collect both personal information (“PI”) and anonymous information. PI is any information that allows a person to become identifiable. Anonymous information is any information that has had the PI stripped out so that it is not personally identifiable.

Carbon Footprint Calculator

The carbon footprint results are estimated using publicly available data from verified resources such as the United States Environmental Protection Agency. When country or region-specific data is unavailable, JouleBug uses an international average to calculate the user’s estimated carbon footprint impact.

Calculations

Impact Calculation

Actions are categorized in one of three labels, which affects how their impact is calculated over time.

Carbon Footprint Calculator