There are things in our daily rush that we pay less attention to, even though subconsciously we are aware that we should. Often this is the case with environmental awareness and sustainable living. Until selective waste collection becomes routine, until we don’t bring our reusable bags for vegetable or fruit shopping, it's always about the rush and comfortable routine winning. Without sorting, we throw metal waste into the trash, or we buy a new plastic bag for our apples every time we go to buy them. Just as this happens at the individual level, it happens at the company level, too. As long as growth is the key and expected, companies pay less attention to how sustainable their activities are. However, a company has a much greater influence than individuals.
How much CO₂ do our users emit?
One summer day, I read a substantial article about climate change, while experiencing a drought I had never seen before, and I became curious about the amount of CO₂ emissions our users emit in a month. When I received the results, I couldn't believe my eyes at first. I was shocked that our few hundred users at the time – among whom those with casco insurance use their vehicles less than average – were responsible for more than 100 tons (!) of CO₂ emissions. I found this value so high that it immediately occurred to me: I must do something!
The Cristo team started working on a solution and conducted market research on the topic. We were curious, firstly, how much this concerns people at all, how aware they are of their own car's pollutant emissions, and how open they would be to change for their own future.
Research Results
The research results shed light on interesting things. Unfortunately - although for understandable reasons - pollutant emissions are negligible when buying a vehicle, only 6% of respondents consider it important when buying a new car, and only 4% when buying a used car, how much their new acquisition pollutes our atmosphere. It also turned out, however, that every 3rd person has already felt bad about polluting their environment, especially women, who are more affected by the topic (37% of women versus 28% of men).
After I myself was shocked by the data, since I couldn't even have guessed our users' average pollutant emissions (not even approximately), it did not surprise me that a large majority of our respondents (85%) were also not aware of the extent to which their car pollutes the environment.
Based on the results, 39% of respondents would base their calculations on fuel consumption and trips made. Unfortunately, it also turned out that 40% of the respondents would not even try to calculate their environmental impact. However, it is reassuring that a large majority of respondents (a total of 81%) stated that they would be willing to donate money for tree planting to support a project aiming at neutralizing their pollutant emissions.
A Mirror for Reducing CO₂ Footprint
Based on the results of the research, the task became clear, and it confirmed that we are on the right track. Since many are unaware of the CO₂ emissions of their vehicles — and many do not want to calculate it — we have done this calculation and made the results available to everyone within the application, and created a platform that makes it easy for the user to support tree planting to reduce their CO₂ footprint.
With the development of the donation-enabling platform, we also sought to find the ideal partner with whom we can identify in terms of values and who has already proven their reliability. It was also important to us that the donations support projects that are realized near the site of pollutant emissions, i.e., in Hungary. This is how we chose the team of the MyForest Community Forests Foundation.
Planting Trees
The fruit of our work debuted in the application on September 4, 2022, under the name Save the Future! where everyone can see how much CO₂ they emit into the atmosphere during their car use, and how many saplings need to be planted to offset this. Contributing to cost of tree planting is just 1-2 clicks away.
I am very proud that in just the first month of its launch, in September, contributions were made for the planting of 325 saplings through our application, which according to calculations agreed upon with the MyForest foundation ensures the planting of enough saplings to sequester nearly 22 tons of CO₂.
Our initiative received positive reception on our social media platforms, which we are very happy about. Although we know that the real solution in the long term is not offsetting emissions, but reducing or completely eliminating them, and that in addition to vehicle emissions, numerous other industries are also involved in accelerating the climate catastrophe. However, we believe that every step, whether individual or company-level, small or large, that at least slightly mitigates the catastrophe, is worth the effort.
I believe that everyone should do what they can to ensure that the environment as we know it today remains enjoyable for our children and grandchildren in the future.
