How We Calculate CO2 Savings

Monthly Actions vs. Long Term

Do Your Part! believes that it is important to allow users the opportunity to try out some actions for a short timeframe before committing them to their lifestyles. For example, riding your bike to work, hanging clothes on the line, and bringing and re-filling your own water bottle, are actions that you may want to try for a month or two before committing to make these actions a part of your permanent lifestyle. Thus, actions that can be sampled for a month will have a button option to “Do This for a Month.” 

Other actions, especially ones that require an investment, like buying a new ENERGY STAR fridge, changing to fluorescent light bulbs, or insulating your home, have a longer timeframe. Actions such as these will not have a “Do This for a Month” option, but instead only have an “Add This to My Lifestyle” button.

CO2 Accounting for Actions

Monthly Actions

Do Your Part! uses annual coefficients to determine the expected average annual carbon reduction, then divides that by 365.25 to get the daily benefit of taking an action. Every night a process will run that will increment your savings (and total action savings) for that day. Once you've completed one month, you can click to “Take This for Another Month.” In this case, the rules for carbon accounting above would repeat. If you click to stop doing an action that you are currently doing for a month, it will no longer accrue the daily benefits.

Lifestyle Actions

Similar to monthly actions, Do Your Part! will take the annual coefficients and divide by 365.25 to get a daily figure. Once an action is added to a lifestyle we will assume that it will go on in perpetuity. When you add an action to your lifestyle, you will begin accruing your daily benefit immediately. If you hit “stop taking this action,” the accrual will cease, but no carbon/dollar savings will be debited from your account.

Credit for Things You Are Already Doing

Do Your Part! is more concerned with counting beneficial actions that you are taking on behalf of the climate than determining if the site caused you to take that action. We do not care if the site was the impetus for the change or not. Moreover, we want to recognize all users for climate friendly actions they are already taking, no matter when they began taking them. Thus, when you click a button to take an action, whether you have been doing it before or not, we will begin accounting as of that day, as detailed above. Do Your Part! will not ask when you actually began taking the action, or give you credit for doing the action prior to the day you first clicked the button on our site.