p/wren
Reduce and offset your carbon footprint
Kat Manalac
Wren — Offset your carbon footprint by saving rainforests
Featured
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Calculate your carbon footprint, and then reverse those emissions by funding projects that save rainforest, plant trees, or prevent cow burps. projectwren.com
Replies
Best
Rashid Aziz

This is so amazing! Getting people to change behavior is always super difficult, but this makes it so easy to see how I can minimize my negative effects on the environment, without too much effort. Would recommend for everyone!

Pros:

Makes it really easy to calculate my carbon footprint, and not only offset it, but also decrease it!

Cons:

Looking forward to more supported projects.

Mimi Tran Zambetti
Thanks for the feedback Rashid! We're going to add a couple more projects in the next week, so keep your eyes peeled! 👀
Dmitri Kyle Brereton
This is a really good way to encourage individuals to do something about climate change since they can visualize their personal impact and do something to offset it. Love it.
Ben Stanfield
@dkb868 Thanks Dmitri! Visualizing something intangible like carbon dioxide can be tough... we're still tinkering with the best way to understand the scope of your carbon emissions 🔭
Landon Brand
Hey Product Hunt! Thanks @katmanalac for Hunting us! We're super excited to share Wren with you today. Believe it or not, we started working together to build HR software. We stuck with it for an embarrassingly long amount of time, but eventually realized that HR software wasn't our thing. We wanted to fight climate change. First, we tried making vegan food. Each step up the food chain is a 10x increase in required resources, so we thought we could save the earth by eating efficiently. We all cut out meat, dairy, etc. to keep a lower carbon footprint diet and we wanted to make it easy for others to do the same. As you might expect, a bunch of hackers cooking vegan food in their tiny college apartment didn't generate much traction. So we went back to doing what we knew how to do: writing software. We realized that despite our best efforts we wouldn't get our carbon footprint down to 0. We buy food that's been shipped to grocery stores, we cook using gas stoves, we even fly across the country sometimes! Most people we know have a similar challenge: they can reduce, reuse, and recycle but even still they feel like they're a burden on our climate. It's just so frustrating to do everything you can to fight climate change and still feel guilty about the way you live your life. That's why we built Wren. Governments around the world are not acting to stop climate change quickly enough. Every year, we're emitting more and more but it feels like we're trying even harder to be good to the environment. With Wren, you can do more than reduce, you can eliminate your footprint by funding projects that clearly prevent deforestation. We need governments to own up to the challenges of climate change. But while we put pressure on them, we can do everything we can as individuals to reduce our emissions. We just started working on this a few weeks ago, so we don't have everything figured out. PLEASE give us your feedback so we can make this better! Let's get millions of people to live carbon neutral!
Dmitri Kyle Brereton
@katmanalac @landon_brand Pivoting from HR software to a climate change app is a hell of a move. I think you made the right choice.
Anders Denne
@katmanalac @landon_brand i dont think any governments around the world will be a part of the solution. But inicitatives like this will move mountains if we all join in!
Mimi Tran Zambetti
@anders_denne While governments certainly aren't incentivized to solve climate change in the short term, I sure hope they will join in on the solution soon...! In the meantime, we all individually need to play our part. Thank you for your support <3
Landon Brand
@katmanalac @dkb868 I don't recommend building HR software LOL. If anyone is considering HR software vs. building something to mitigate climate change, let me convince you to work on something for our planet!
Gustaf Alströmer
This makes a lot of sense to me. Most people care about climate change but have a limited number of things they can do to make a difference. A trustworthy subscription-based offset program can go a long way to have immediate impact as an individual.
Calvin LeGassick

Such an exciting product! So many fun ways things can go: - See the impact of the global wren community - Import financial / email data to have more wholistic calculator - Get recommendations on which lifestyle changes you could make that would be sweet-spot of having an outsized impact on your footprint AND being realistic given your preferences. - Be able to add smaller community projects like planting 15 trees. Would need to figure out a way to verify projects at scale. - Breakdowns of why average carbon footprint responsibility is so different across countries. - Contribute to projects an an index-fund type way.

Pros:

Personal carbon footprint compared to country / global averages. Efficient design, clear footprint calculations, project verification.

Cons:

Despite well-designed project pages, can be hard to compare projects. Not clear how to interact with Wren as my footprint changes.

Mimi Tran Zambetti
So many awesome ideas @calvinlegassick! For the projects, right now we're sticking with in depth stories on a project's environmental + social impact but we're definitely still figuring out the best way to display projects.
Aaron Epstein
I've always wanted to do my part to help combat climate change, but never really knew where to begin. So I'm glad Wren makes it super easy to calculate my carbon impact and then subscribe to offset it each month, without having to think about. Super easy!
Anthony Feint
Love this - would love to see more projects though and some stats on how much carbon each project has saved
Mimi Tran Zambetti
@feint We've got a couple more projects coming this week! And that's a good point about historical data on current projects. Are you talking about how much carbon each project has saved since it started running?
Josh Lurie
Pros: * Understand how I can change my weekly routine to reduce my carbon footprint * Passively negate my negative climate change impact with a small subscription * Learn about / contribute to awesome climate projects around the world! Cons: * I can't wait until new projects come onto the platform
Ben Stanfield
@josh_lurie1 Hi Josh! What kind of carbon reduction projects would you like to see us partnered with? We just added a new energy project from Northern Uganda, which produces clean biomass briquettes as an alternative to coal and charcoal.
Adena Bauer
Thanks so much, team! Awesome idea! How do you ensure that your partner "projects" adequately offset the carbon footprints of your users? Do you do QA at all?
Ben Stanfield
Hi Adena! We're getting a strange error when trying to reply to this comment—messaged PH support about the problem.
Landon Brand
@adena_bauer1 It depends on the project, but we usually do several of these: 1. Look at all the documentation they have of the project—photos, videos, data, etc. 2. Read a few papers about appropriate methodologies for the project to ensure we're on the same page about how the carbon is counted 3. Asking our project partners the followup questions we have to make sure everything is up to our standard Then, we get ongoing updates about the projects from our partners. If something happens and a project were to fail somehow, we would offset with another project, like insurance.
Richard Zhang
This is exactly what I’ve been waiting for: a straightforward, efficient, transparent, and mission-oriented product that aspires to further the environment-saving cause. I will definitely be following this product and am excited for what they set out to accomplish in the future!
Kris Dabrowski
Great initiative. I love the fact that people start to care more about the carbon footprint especially nowadays when things are getting worse. Apparently, I have to limit my footprint myself and it's great that on top of it, you introduce the projects I can support to make the World a better place to live for all of us. I would appreciate a unit conversion though so that non-Americans don't have to use external converters to calculate square feet, gallons, etc.
Landon Brand
@dabrowski_kris Unit conversion is a must! Great point! Just put it on our roadmap
Stephen Chen
This is a great idea. Love how Wren makes understanding and offsetting your carbon footprint super simple. Kudos to the whole team, the world needs more products like this.
Ben Stanfield
@stephenchen Thank you Stephen! Welcome to the Wren flock 😌 🐦
Louison Dumont
As you probably know, the major culprit of our climate crisis is the food industry. I have been dreaming of an app that lets people scan products in supermarkets to instantly track their energy consumption. Is this something you've been thinking about? IMO, you need a drastically more accessible interface in order to reach greater impact. It needs to be easier to use than Snapchat. If you'd like to discuss this more thoroughly, I'm open for a quick call this week. I just emailed you a copy of this message.
Ben Stanfield
@louisondumont Hi Louison! We got your email. We'll send you some of our thoughts on that thread...
Nikita Barabanov
is there a way to see suggestions on how to improve your footprint based on you results? that would be a dope solution (that's most likely have already been developed, i'm just to lazy to find it)
Ben Stanfield
@mukut Yep—we just released a new version of our calculator. After answering a few questions we start to generate your Carbon Report, which has visualizations and suggestions related to your footprint.
Delphine
Pro: The product execution on this is absolutely fantastic, prob best one I've seen of all carbon offsetting tools. Con: I doubt the methodology for the calculator a bit, sounds too good to be true that I can offset all my emissions just for £5 a month. Obviously it's impossible to calculate it exactly and it's good to have low barriers to entry for members, given that they have nice nudges to increase your subscription amount if you can. Would love to see you use your fab product design skills to nudge people into further action beyond offsetting once they've subscribed (changing daily habits, how to drive local political action etc).
Calvin LeGassick
Seriously in love with this. I want to know what's next! When will we get a public feature roadmap??
Ben Stanfield
@calvinlegassick We're working on it 😉
Landon Brand
@calvinlegassick <3 thanks Calvin! Public feature roadmap is a fantastic idea, that would be so fun! For now, we're most focused on onboarding new projects and making our calculator more accurate. Providing ideas for reducing users' footprints is a goal as well, probably after we have a calculator that's a bit more granular.
Calvin LeGassick
@landon_brand a good resource for public roadmaps! https://frontapp.com/blog/2015/0...
Abigail Africa
I feel great knowing I can do something passively when I work long hours & my options for actively reducing my carbon footprint are limited. Excited to see new partner projects go up!
Landon Brand
@abigail_africa It can be really tough to live a sustainable lifestyle when you're working a demanding job. That's a huge inspiration for Wren—when you're forced into unsustainable lifestyles because of work, you can at least feel a bit better knowing that you're offsetting your footprint.
Abigail Africa

I love how I get to see the stories and math behind the offset and the project I chose

Pros:

I feel good knowing that I'm supporting genuine attempts to serve the environment, esp when my daily active options are limited!

Cons:

I'm excited to see more projects to choose from

Jet Kwok
"How can an individual like me make a difference?" - said 10+ billions of people (gotta count the ancestors). This product encourages people to do their part and contribute what they can. Can't wait to see how the community grows.
Adena Bauer

I highly recommend Wren if you care about rebuilding our environment! Thank you so much to the team for giving me an easy way to make an impact.

Pros:

Extremely simple way to offset my carbon footprint! Loved the interface!

Cons:

None so far! Been using Wren for a couple weeks.