Panasonic FUTURE LIFE FACTORY Announces “Carbon Pay,” Its Initiative to Support Carbon Offsetting
March 9, 2022 – Tokyo
McCann Alpha, a business co-creation division of McCann Japan (President and CEO: Hiroaki Mori), is pleased to announce the launch of a new environmental awareness and action initiative designed and developed in partnership with FUTURE LIFE FACTORY (FLF), a studio within Panasonic’s Design Center. Blue Puddle Inc. (President: Neji Sato) and NPO weMORI (Representative: Ian Shimizu) also collaborated on developing the service content. To bring the concept to life, an exhibit will be held showcasing the new ‘norms’ of the future.
The “Carbon Pay” Concept—Discover Your Carbon Footprint and Pay for What You Emit
The “Carbon Pay” concept is an initiative launched by FUTURE LIFE FACTORY, Panasonic’s design studio specializing in advanced development that aims to realize a more fulfilling future for the world. McCann Alpha, Blue Puddle, and weMORI also participated in the project as project partners.
“Carbon Pay” will offer a way for people to offset their carbon footprint* by paying for what they emit, with the money going to various green efforts, such as forest conservation, tree and coral planting, construction of renewable energy power plants, and other green tech. The specific system to bring the idea to life is currently being developed.
*Carbon footprint refers to the amount of greenhouse gases emitted during each phase of a product or service lifecycle.
Home Devices That Also Display Your Carbon Footprint
As part of realizing the concept, we designed a prototype of a home device that displays your carbon footprint along with other information. We envision this feature to be included in various everyday appliances and devices, such as remote controls, coffee machines, and audio equipment. Our aim is for the unit “kgCO2e” to become as familiar as units for temperature and humidity and for people to care about it in the same way.
The “Carbon Pay” App
A prototype was also created for a “Carbon Pay” app.
The app is also designed to display a breakdown of the user’s carbon footprint, such as Home, Transport, etc. This will make visible what they need to work on to reduce their footprint. For example, a person may be too focused on saving electricity at home, while in actually efforts need to be made in their clothes consumption and transport.
When users pay for their emission, the app screen changes color from red to green. However, users will continue to be made aware of the actual size of their emission so that they can remain conscious of their footprint.
The priority action to be taken is of course changing behavior, but what if they’ve reached their limit of reducing their actual emissions? What else can they do?
The “Carbon Pay” concept aims to design a system that will help people become carbon neutral by calculating their footprint and offering ways to offset it.