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Software Notebook: SPU students' pitch -- buy online, reduce carbon footprint

TODD BISHO, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Published 10:00 pm, Sunday, April 20, 2008
  • SPU students, from left to right, Reed Probus, Kevin McFarland, Ryan Tilton and Laura Hanes have developed CarbonCart.com, a finalist in Microsoft's Imagine Cup contest. Photo: PAUL JOSEPH BROWN/P-I


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How many online shoppers will be willing to pay more for a product if it helps make up for the environmental impact of shipping it to them?

That's one question behind a new e-commerce site being developed by a group of Seattle Pacific University students. CarbonCart.com will offer products from the Amazon.com catalog at a premium, and then contribute a portion to projects designed to compensate for the pollutants emitted by the vehicles used in shipping.

They aim to launch the site in June, and hope to make it a profitable business. It's also a U.S. finalist in Microsoft's annual Imagine Cup software design contest for students. The CarbonCart team competes in Los Angeles this week.

"When you're thinking about an individual action, trying to fix the problem of global warming, it's really just a drop in the bucket," said Reed Probus, 19, one of the students behind the project. "When you can create a company that allows thousands of people to make a positive impact on the environment when they purchase something they would normally, that's when a real difference can be made."

Carbon offsets, as they're known, are becoming increasingly common in business, and in shipping. CarbonCart.com is partnering with a group called Carbonfund.org to fund renewable energy, reforestation and energy-efficiency projects at a level meant to neutralize the impact of the items shipped.

Environmental advocates have mixed feelings about carbon offsets, citing the need for more fundamental reforms.

"We don't think that programs like this can be any sort of substitute for real government action on global warming policy," said Jessica Coven, policy associate at the nonprofit Climate Solutions advocacy organization. "We need to have a cap on the overall global-warming pollution in our economy."

At the same time, she said, "It's great that there are any students trying to see how they can encourage people to really reflect on the environmental impact of their own purchases."

The students came up with the CarbonCart concept last year. The for-profit CarbonCart LLC business was created and is owned by Probus, 19, a business administration student from Sammamish; and Ryan Tilton, 19, a computer science student from Duvall. Joining them on the project are Laura Hanes, 19, a marketing student from Bonney Lake; and Kevin McFarland, 18, a student from Bellevue who is studying economics and classics.

They're drawing in part on Tilton's experience as an entrepreneur, which is already extensive despite his age. By his count, CarbonCart is his fifth venture. He started as a teenager selling audio subwoofers, and later tried portable hard drives. In addition, he ran an e-commerce site called stockthat.com, which provided some insights and lessons the students are now applying to CarbonCart.

The site will operate in connection with an Amazon.com program called "Drop Ship by Amazon," which effectively lets companies treat Amazon as a supplier -- offering products from the Amazon catalog on their own sites, and then having Amazon ship directly to their customers.

CarbonCart plans to charge a premium of 5 percent to 8 percent over the retail price of the product. A portion of that will fund the carbon offsets.

In addition to conceiving CarbonCart as a business, Tilton and Probus got the idea to enter Microsoft's Imagine Cup from a video of the competition shown in class by Phil Prins, an SPU computer science professor.

The students will be making their Imagine Cup presentations Monday in Los Angeles, facing stiff competition from colleges such as the University of Iowa, Oklahoma State University, UCLA and Carnegie Mellon. The SPU students say they're not worried.

"We believe in our product," Hanes said.

The top U.S. team will win $12,000, distributed equally among the members, and a trip to Paris for the international Imagine Cup finals in July.

One of the toughest questions the students get is what they'll do if Amazon itself starts to offer customers the option of paying more to offset the environmental impact of shipping. One idea, they say, is to diversify their own offerings.

"We're looking at future steps (such as) incorporating other products and more partners, so we don't put all our eggs in one basket with Amazon," McFarland said. "It's a risk, but it doesn't seem like that much of a risk yet."

CarbonCart also competed in SPU's recent Social Venture Plan Competition. Two of the business people judging the contest gave them business cards and talked about following up, Tilton said: "You know you have a good idea if judges are giving you cards."