Like so many other industries, the green business craze is evident in mobile. Nokia stressed its green cred at its event in Amsterdam last week, and just today, Vodafone and Ericsson announced that the operator would use Ericsson’s Power Savings feature in its base stations. The feature “significantly reduces energy consumption in mobile networks and therefore makes an important contribution to cutting carbon-dioxide emissions,” and Vodafone admits it also cuts operational costs (though it buries that bit after all the greenspeak).
Then, in a brilliant bout of meme convergence, a friend mentioned that he’d been especially productive at work today, having worked out the costs of carbon-offsetting a packet of crisps. I then joked he should put it on a web site, and get sponsorship from UK potato-chip giant Walkers. But I one-upped myself: why not get a shortcode, then get Walkers, and whoever else, to tack it on their products with a “Offset the carbon generated in the production of these crisps by texting CRISP to 12345″? Users then get charged 10p or whatever via PSMS, and get a warm fuzzy green feeling to boot.
Instigated by somebody ethical, who we’ll label a “hippie” just for the ease of discussion, maybe there’s some value here (though, as always, operator revenue-sharing makes it tough). Or there’s plenty of potential for the non-ethical type, who we’ll call a “capitalist pig”, to make some good coin: the friend worked out the cost of offsetting the crisps to be 1p for every 1.3kg. Charge 10p and that’s quite a profit margin.
The ever-helpful Google reveals that related efforts are already underway. Avis UK lets customers offset their car rentals with a £1.50 text, and a group called the World Land Trust gives people in the UK the ability to offset 53kg of carbon dioxide with a £1.50 PSMS as well. It’s not immediately clear if either is taking the hippie or capitalist pig approach (though I’ll note that CarbonFund.org sells offsets at $5.50 per metric ton).
Still, I can’t imagine we’re far off from seeing offers like this get tacked on to individual products, offering a short code plus a product-specific keyword, given the current faddish nature of carbon-offsetting. Hopefully it will be legitimate, and not a scam.
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