About episode
The IPCC report that came out recently found that demand side changes, including consumer behavior change, can help reduce 40 to 70% of the emissions that we need to cut by 2050. So we do have power to meet global climate goals, especially where we act together, and when we know which choices to focus on.
I’ll be honest here, I don’t think carbon offsets are the answer. Companies relying only on offsets to become carbon neutral are pushing off the hard work of reducing their emissions. On the individual level, however, buying offsets actually has a different effect. It gets individuals to become more engaged in managing their carbon footprint, in talking about climate, and getting involved in activism. This is some of what I learned from Sanchli Pal, founder of a venture-backed startup called Joro.
In this episode of Invested in Climate, we talk to Sanchali about the work she does, how individual decisions can spark systemic change, and what we can all do today to reduce our emissions.
In Today’s Episode, we cover:
- [2:55] What is Joro and what problem is it aiming to solve
- [4:21] The methodology behind tracking and calculating an individual’s carbon footprint
- [8:03] What is an offset and how it works
- [9:08] The validity of concerns around offsetting
- [11:38] The most impactful lifestyle choices we can make to reduce our footprint
- [14:46] How Sanchali started her journey as a founder
- [17:52] Focusing on individuals for leveraging systems change
- [20:16] The multiplier effect through building community
- [23:20] Consumer demands and the need for Joro
- [24:46] Drawing inspiration for US consumers from international progress
- [28:55] Using metrics to work towards a new way of thinking
- [30:37] Areas where people made the biggest carbon reductions in the last year
- [34:18] Work and learning to address the climate crisis
What is Joro and what problem is it aiming to solve
Joro helps people manage their carbon as easily as they manage their finances. The problem is that many of us care about doing something about climate change, many of us are even alarmed, and are actively looking for things to do that will make a difference – but it’s hard to make sense of what actually matters and to understand what you can do without drastically changing your quality of life.
As a solution, Joro meets people where they are and democratizes access to carbon data so people have access to it for their personal decision making. It’s a free mobile app that connects your credit and debit cards, automatically tracking the carbon of every purchase you make. Using the power of data, you can find ways to reduce your carbon footprint by changing your behavior to lower the emissions from your lifestyle. You can also discover meaningful offsets that are curated and evaluated for you.
How Sanchali started her journey as a founder
When Sanchali was a senior in college, she saw the documentary Food Inc. and happened to be the manager of her dining hall at the time. As an economics major that just started a sustainable economics class, Sanchali was spending a lot of time learning about supply, demand, markets, and how they’re made before the film awakened her to her role as a market participant. Her attitude and beliefs about industrial food systems changed after learning about where food comes from and the effect that they have on the planet. She decided she didn’t want to use her money to support it and wanted to make a difference instead. That’s what got her interested in carbon tracking.
Sanchali started tracking the carbon footprint solely from her meals at first. She found that she was actually eating meat roughly 12 meals a week through her dining hall, without really thinking about or being intentional. She gradually reduced her meat consumption to two meals per week and found that just that one action made an impact equivalent to taking half a car off the road that year. With this understanding, she talked to the chefs at her dining hall and advocated to provide more sustainable food options for the 200 people who ate there, resulting in an impact equivalent to taking hundreds of cars off the road that year. That was really what showed Sanchali the power of aggregate demand and community as another way of saying that when people take action together, it really matters.
Using metrics to work towards a new way of thinking
As Sanchali explains, using Joro is about finding balance. It’s about finding balance in your life with the world that we live in, and using our consumption intentionally to try to create the world that we all want to live in together going forward. Joro tracks a lot of the normal metrics that an app or a company typically tracks such as user growth and revenue, but they also track a lot of impact metrics. Joro looks at what percentage of users are actually engaged with reducing carbon right now and how much carbon per person is being reduced or removed. Last year, Joro’s average user that tracked their emissions throughout the year lowered their footprint by about 21%. Half of that was through behavior change, about half of it was through offsets.
Tune in to learn more about the actions you can take to reduce your emissions!
Resources & People Mentioned
Connect with Sanchali Pal
Connect With Jason Rissman
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