Program helps kids find their carbon impact


In the ranking of teenage pursuits, cell phones and social networking usually rate higher than protecting the environment.

But a new pilot project in San Francisco is incorporating GPS-equipped cell phones and Facebook to help students learn about their impact on the environment.

The Go Green Foundation of San Francisco, with support from Nokia, UCLA and AT&T, has been testing a groundbreaking project for the past month that allows 25 students at the Urban School in San Francisco to track their transportation habits using GPS-handsets from Nokia over AT&T's network.

The cell phones act as real-time sensors, sending information every 30 seconds to servers at UCLA's Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, which organizes the information on personal Web maps and charts for students and allows them to publish their individual and collective results to Facebook.

From the information, students can see how much carbon they're producing in their various transportation decisions. UCLA's software can detect the difference between walking, biking and driving a car as opposed to riding on a bus.

The data create what UCLA researchers have dubbed a personal environmental impact report that encourages students to choose more environmentally friendly transportation options when available.

"The message is: Kids are empowered to make choices about the type of transportation they're using and those choices have a very material impact on the environment," said Martin Gutierrez, founder of the Go Green Foundation, a recently created environmental nonprofit.

Project organizers are planning to expand the program to 75 more students at three private high schools in San Francisco later this year. The schools will be able to compare results and compete to lower their carbon impact through Facebook, where they will be publishing their progress.

Jeff Burke, area lead for UCLA's Center for Embedded Network Sensing, said the social networking aspect helps put the results in a relevant context and allows participants to compete among themselves.

"In order for people to understand the numbers, it's not enough to see just kilograms of carbon," he said. "When they can compare themselves to friends and others on Facebook, they can make sense of what they're doing."

The UCLA center has been working with Nokia's Research Center in Palo Alto on the personal environmental impact report project, conducting a number of internal tests. The San Francisco trial is the first real-world test for the program.

Eventually, Burke said, the goal is to make the project software available as a download for any GPS-enabled phone, so individuals can monitor their own carbon impact.

John Shen, lab director for the Nokia Research Center, said the project touches on the power of the cell phone as a real-time sensor. Shen said for teens in particular, using a cell phone to bring home lessons about a sometimes abstract topic like the environment makes sense. And it proves more accurate and less burdensome than self-reporting, he said.

"I have three teenagers and the cell phone is the last thing they'll part with," Shen said. "This device is helping them monitor how much carbon they're chewing up. It's a personal, tangible way to connect to that message."

For students in the program, the results have been eye-opening and challenging. Julia Evans, a 17-year-old senior, said she started riding her bike more around her home in Burlingame when she realized how much carbon she was using for short trips.

"Instead of driving, I'm biking more because I'm subconsciously connecting this phone in my pocket with how much energy I'm using," she said.

Gutierrez's twin 15-year-olds Catalina and Trevor, both freshmen at Urban, helped their father create the Go Green Foundation and pursue the personal environmental impact report trial. But even they have found that it's not always easy to live up to their convictions.

Catalina said it's difficult to forgo a morning ride to school from her parents and set aside the time it takes to ride a bike or take the bus.

"It's hard to step away from the car," she said. "But even though it takes an extra step to walk or bike, we see it can make a difference."