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Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint

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Re: Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint

#81

Post by mtranzambetti »

nostromo wrote: post #64
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #62

I'm more interested in setting up consumer/hobbyist level carbon capture processes (if thermodynamically possible). Rough outline from Rod Fitzsimmons: - capture of CO2 from the atmosphere using a variety of techniques, usually adsorbtion ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage ). This takes quite a bit of energy. - Conversion of the dissolved CO2 into alcohols. Reaction is 2CO2 + 9H2O + 12e- → C2H…

- plant a tree It solar powered and even self-replicating!

We're big into tree planting :)

Re: Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint

#82

Post by mtranzambetti »

ars wrote: post #65
nostromo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- plant a tree It solar powered and even self-replicating!

Let ivy grow on your walls. The kind with glue pads will not harm walls, and the leaves provide shade in the summer and fall off in the winter.

Ivy walls are very beautiful. Might be hard to do at scale + also apparently difficult to maintain but I wouldn't know

Re: Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint

#83

Post by StavrosK »

mtranzambetti wrote: post #68
angerbot wrote: post #59

Super neat! One note that I found odd: km/L is a weird way to talk about fuel efficiency for metric. Everywhere that I've seen typically uses L/100km rather than just doing a MPG equivalent conversion.

Oh great to know. We recently added in support for metric conversion and weren't familiar with the standard for mpg to metric. We'll change that!

Yes, that was very confusing for me because nobody here uses km/L. It's always L/100km.

Re: Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint

#84

Post by johnsimer »

landon32 wrote: post #18
balletbalance wrote: post #15

> We take a 20% fee on each subscription. Why did you choose to charge with a percentage model instead of a flat fee? If I'm a "hero" and offset double my footprint why should I be charged double for doing that? Is the cost to you as a business relative to the dollar amount I donate?

This is a great question. To be completely transparent, we are considering a flat fee because of the reason you stated. We originally chose a percent fee because it was an industry standard model that many in the carbon offset space expect. However, we're learning that industry standard here does not mean it's the best possible option. The big reason why a % fee is good is because for small donations (e.g. 25% of som…

what about letting your users get a % of all the money from collected from users they invite?

They could either receive those as Stripe payouts, or further reinvest their earnings into curing global warming

i.e. cure global warming MLM style

This could also open up some nice customer acquisition strategies benefit from asymmetric motivation: teenagers/kids bunch of teenagers (who would spend hours persuading their rich parents /grandparents to donate $50/mo, such that in return the teenager earns $5/mo). This may be able to help mitigate the problem that older people are less likely to believe in the severity of global warming than younger people - in the same way that your grandma bought your magazine in 5th grade (so that you could win a prize, not because she actually cared about the magazine) as part of those gamified magazine fundraisers in elementary school

Re: Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint

#85

Post by mtranzambetti »

plondon514 wrote: post #52
landon32 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh that's a great point. You can absolutely use our carbon calculator and then find another project to support. We want to make a really good carbon calculator that's useful to everyone, not just Wren subscribers. Let us know if you have ideas or feedback there.

Could you provide an API for the carbon calculator? Or is that relatively easy to build?

Here's the info on how we built it — Landon posted about this a few hours ago:

> We use data + research from Berkeley's cool climate lab (https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/publications) The main model is maintained by them, and is based on linear regression from a bunch of lifestyle variables that you input into the calculator. Our version is slightly different because we base it on country instead of zip code, so we scale most input variables by the country's per capita emissions to get a good estimate.

Some of the data might be a little tricker to find but most of it is based off of Cool Climate's model + World Bank per capita emissions data. Let us know if we can help with anything here!

Re: Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint

#86

Post by cotap »

StavrosK wrote: post #79
cotap wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COTAP here... Thanks to thisjustinm for getting us into the conversation : ) Not to rain on the parade here, just a cautionary tale that is intended to be helpful... I would say take a look at Cool Effect which launched in early 2016. Charity at a glance, but it's also a bottomless-pocketed family from Marin. It cuts itself checks from the Overlook Intl Foundation, run by the same people. Both orgs have same CEO. All…

Sorry, I'm not very familiar with charities, can you clarify what your point is here? I'm not sure what Cool Effect is or what you're talking about.

They're a 501(c)3 private foundation, similar to a 501(c)3 public charity like COTAP. This makes offsetting contributions tax-deductible. The point is by making it tax-deductible, along with other things like helping folks offset monthly, they've already tried to make it as compelling and easy as possible to offset, but no dice relative to time/effort/$ put in. Similar to StandforTrees.org. I'm basically saying I don't think Wren is different enough, other than charging higher margins, something not in their favor. It is good they're transparent about margins, but that's not unique either.

Re: Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint

#87

Post by landon32 »

rococode wrote: post #45
landon32 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your footprint should be available on that page—you should be able to see your annual total, your breakdowns by category, and how that compares to global averages. The "Email me my footprint" button just sends you a link so you can save it. I could see how you may want to change the email you entered once you get there though. We should add that! Thanks for pointing that out

I just ran through the page after seeing this comment and was also confused. To me the phrasing and styling of the "Email me my footprint" button makes it feel like the end of the process and that I need to click it. It didn't immediately occur to me that I should keep scrolling down. In my case I happened to scroll so that the "Step 3: Offset" was just out of view which made it feel even more like an "OK you're done…

This is a great point, you're right. Thank you for that feedback, we can edit that soon.

Re: Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint

#88

Post by mancuso5 »

OmarIsmail wrote: post #53
landon32 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happy to hear it. One thing to mention though: We don't think offsetting is a license to live guilt free. We still have to do more! Hopefully the carbon footprint calculator will give you some ideas for how you can cut down your footprint pretty easily—often something as simple as cutting out red meat or using public transit more often can make a big difference. Also, progress from political action will likely be nec…

Maybe you should expand your offering so that I can live guilt free. That's what I really want. To maintain my standard of living without harming the planet.

That’s impossible unfortunately. Money alone won’t “buy” a guilt free, business-as-usual lifestyle in the face of this emergency. I suggest doing a bit more research to see for yourself what I mean.

Re: Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint

#89

Post by ars »

mtranzambetti wrote: post #82
ars wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let ivy grow on your walls. The kind with glue pads will not harm walls, and the leaves provide shade in the summer and fall off in the winter.

Ivy walls are very beautiful. Might be hard to do at scale + also apparently difficult to maintain but I wouldn't know

Why hard at scale?

The only maintenance I've found you needed to do is clear the windows - do it at least monthly during the growing season. And also don't let it grow on to gutters.

Basically push the ivy off of the windows so it hangs down. Hanging down like that seems to send the plant a signal to stop growing in the area. (If you cut it it seems to grow even faster there.)

If the plant dies, which does happen, you need to wait a while for the glue pads to degrade before removing the old plant from the walls.

It's not really any harder than dealing with gardening in general.

Re: Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint

#90

Post by landon32 »

cotap wrote: post #76
gustaf wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really good point. The goal of both Wren and COTAP is to have the most impact solving climate change. Having the most impact doesn't have to mean you charge the lowest fee - but it does mean removing the most amount of CO2. If charging a higher fee gives Wren a change to reach millions and get them to pay more where COTAP is still tiny and have one-time donations that is a strong argument for why a differen…

COTAP here... Thanks to thisjustinm for getting us into the conversation : ) Not to rain on the parade here, just a cautionary tale that is intended to be helpful... I would say take a look at Cool Effect which launched in early 2016. Charity at a glance, but it's also a bottomless-pocketed family from Marin. It cuts itself checks from the Overlook Intl Foundation, run by the same people. Both orgs have same CEO. All…

Wow, I hadn't heard that story before.

One thing that might help is if we publish all of our spending online in a transparent way. There are probably legal/accounting considerations we'd need there but I'd imagine it would be safe to post that after each year.

So far, we have spent less than $200 on marketing and PR, mostly to test Google Ads. We realized pretty quickly google ads weren't effective so we shut them off. Since we're setup as a business we can't afford to lose money on each ton.

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