Amanda Gassé for Zondits, January 11, 2015. Image credit: Layer Design
Wearable technology has taken a big step into 2016 by integrating the Internet of Things with each individual’s environmental consciousness. London designer Benjamin Hubert partnered with Carbon Trust to produce Worldbeing, a Fitbit-like wearable that can track an individual’s carbon footprint. While Worldbeing is still a prototype, it translates the elusive concept of an individual’s carbon footprint into real and trackable information. The wristband calculates its wearer’s carbon usage by connecting to data sources to generate individual maps of consumption. Worldbeing wearers will be encouraged to lower their carbon scores via competitions with other users and rewards linked to local businesses through an accompanying app. And there’s more feel-good news about this future wearable: Hubert designed the wristband to be injection-molded from recycled discarded devices. In the not-so-distant future, wearable technology will be able to tell us exactly how our actions impact the well-being of the planet.
A Fitbit-Like Wearable That Tracks Your Carbon Footprint
Slate, October 12, 2015
Hoping to tap into the same obsessive impulse that drives the quantified-self movement, London-based designer Benjamin Hubert’s Layer design agency is working with U.K.-based Carbon Trust, which helps organizations and governments around the world reduce carbon emissions, to develop Worldbeing, a Fitbit-like wearable and app that would help individuals monitor their carbon footprints.
There has never been a better time to use design as a tool to create meaningful conversation around our personal responsibility to make changes to our lifestyles to stop global warming. We desperately need a platform that helps the world to understand what our personal carbon footprint is and why we should be decreasing it in an accessible manner that has a high level of engagement.
-Benjamin Hubert
Worldbeing – a wearable for the world from Benjamin Hubert on Vimeo.
While Worldbeing is only in the concept stage, the designers anticipate that “the near future will be a place of accountability,” with businesses listing the carbon footprints of their products and services. More transparent data could eventually allow Worldbeing to track food, home energy consumption, shopping, and travel using Apple Pay–like contactless wireless payments that operate using ECG sensors. The data collected from these payments would then be used to calculate carbon usage. Worldbeing could also partner with the databases of existing services and apps such as Moven to track real-time purchases, Google Maps to track travel, and MyFitnessPal to track food consumption.
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