Cilo’s easy-to-use footprint tracker lets you see the carbon cost of the products you buy, get personalised reduction tips, and compete with friends and family to achieve your climate goals.
Hi Hunters!
Laurence and Ryan here, founders and developers of Cilo. We’re on a mission to make sustainable attainable.
We believe that individuals can play a huge role in the fight against climate change.
But reducing your carbon footprint right now would be like trying to save up money if none of the products you were buying had price tags and you didn’t have a bank account to track your spending over time.
That’s why we built Cilo, and as of today our public beta is available on iOS! (Android version coming soon…)
So how does it work?
✓ See products’ carbon cost
Every food and drink item has a unique carbon footprint estimate based on academic research & industry data, with estimates for travel, energy and fashion coming soon!
✓ Track your carbon spending
Our calorie-counting style UX makes recording data quick and easy. It takes just 2 minutes a day - quicker than brushing your teeth!
✓ Reduce with personalised tips
We need to make small, sustainable improvements continually to get to net-zero by 2050. See how much different carbon saving actions would save YOU and set targets to achieve your goals!
✓ Compete with friends and family
A problem shared is a problem halved. Get your pals involved, compete to be the most carbon conscious, and achieve your climate goals together. We're giving away £100 in prizes to the users that top the leaderboard in August!
Our goal is to help as many people as possible reduce their carbon footprint by as much as possible. Your feedback at this early stage will be crucial in achieving that.
If you want to help us on our journey, please consider downloading the app and letting us know your thoughts.
Thanks for your support and please don’t hesitate to reach out to us directly!
Cheers,
Laurence and Ryan
(PS the footprint data is UK centric at the moment. But a lot of the information still has value if you live elsewhere, and we’re working on adapting it to new markets as soon as possible).
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@lcolli71 I think this a great idea. We all need to do our part. Will be trying this out today.
Fantastic concept and a well-needed tracker of our carbon consumption - we only have one planet after all. Being competitive I love the idea of a leaderboard - will definitely be sharing to others.
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@lcolli71 This is a fantastic idea! I’ve been wanting to see how I could reduce my carbon footprint for ages, will be giving it a go this afternoon.
I love that this looks at the actual products I’ve bought to measure my carbon footprint! One thing I don’t like about other carbon footprint tracking apps I’ve tried is they just look at how much I spent at Tescos, but don’t know if I bought 10 gallons of petrol or a bag or carrots. Quick question though - how does the app know what I’ve bought?
@jess_cowie Great question Jess - Cilo works in a similar way to nutrition tracking apps. So you can just search products in our database, and add them to a new transaction as you buy them.
It takes less than 2mins a day for our current users - quicker than brushing your teeth!
We are working on integrating open banking API’s to automatically sync your transactions, and barcode scanning to make adding products even easier. But you’ll never need to connect your bank account if you don’t want to!
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I love the idea of this, but it looks like a lot of the data is UK centric? I live in New Zealand so how useful will the advice the app gives be for me?
@seb_rex Hello Seb, a great question! All of our research so far is UK centric. Footprint estimates can vary considerably in different regions (and in the same region!). So the numbers contained in our app will not directly apply to New Zealand.
However, there is still a lot to be learned in the app. High carbon products like beef are likely to be high carbon pretty much everywhere, and local in-season vegetables, grown outdoors, are likely to be low-carbon in most areas.
Take the data with a pinch of salt, and try to think about what makes a low-carbon product. Our Instagram is a great place to improve you carbon-instinct! @ciloapp
We plan to expand our database to new regions as soon as possible, and we’ll keep you up to date on our progress!
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I think this is such a great idea. Well done team! One question - As a brand owner, how would we get our products onto your app?
@kate_percy Thanks Kate, and great question! Currently we are providing only product specific data, not brand specific (eg we have a footprint for beer but not Peroni). Eventually we'd like to start telling our users about companies we think are providing products that have a lower carbon footprint than what is typical, and I'd be delighted to reach out at that stage if you're interested?
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This is a really great idea, can you get an easy breakdown of the carbon footprint of each product? Would be really interesting to see why each item has a high/low carbon cost
@james_devan Great question, thanks James! We've just adding some explanatory detail in our latest "tips". We give you a load of carbon saving actions, and tell you how much each would reduce your footprint based on your purchase history.
So for example, did you know that one easy to way to reduce your carbon footprint if you're a beer drinker is to buy it in cans rather than bottles? This is because bottles weigh more, so the emissions associated with transporting them are higher. On top of that, glass is much harder and more energy intensive to recycle.
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Really cool idea!! Will it ever be possible to measure the impact of my consumption on other things I care about? Like fairtrade products, LGBTQ run businesses, good worker rights etc
Looking forward for the arrival on Android!
@oscar_zollman_thomas Great question Oscar! We wanted to provide the best, most accurate, most precise data possible, which is quite a task so for now we're limiting our focus to climate change to make sure we get that right. But we're always adding new features based on user feedback so it's great to hear that this is something you'd like to see!
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Cool idea! Are transportation costs taken into account or is it just about the production of the item? Cause I guess that would vary depending on the time of year (like in summer/autumn we probably have more home grown produce in the UK)
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