What it is
Commons (formerly Joro) is a mobile app that automatically estimates your carbon footprint from your spending data. Connect your bank account or credit card, and Commons categorizes purchases and estimates the associated emissions: food, transportation, home energy, goods, and services. The app tracks your footprint over time, shows which categories are highest, and suggests specific reduction actions. No manual logging required.
Why we picked this
Most carbon footprint tools require you to manually enter data, which means you use them once and forget. Commons automates the process by reading your actual spending. Buy gas: it estimates driving emissions. Order a steak dinner: it estimates the food footprint. Fly to a conference: it adds the flight emissions. This continuous, automatic tracking creates awareness without effort. Users report that simply seeing the carbon cost of purchases changes behavior over time, even without deliberate reduction goals.
Key takeaways
- Automatic tracking from spending data eliminates manual logging, providing continuous carbon footprint monitoring without user effort.
- The app maps over 50,000 merchants to emissions categories, estimating per-purchase carbon impact based on merchant type, transaction amount, and sector averages.
- Users report a 15 to 20% reduction in high-carbon purchases within 3 months of tracking, driven by increased awareness of the carbon cost of everyday spending.