Lotus Greens launched its own Green Application

As part of its regular sustainability initiatives geared towards improving the ecological balance and minimising the impact on the environment, Lotus Greens has launched a Green App in the form of an online calculator that can track and measure your carbon footprint and suggest ways to reduce it. A carbon footprint is the measurement of carbon dioxide that we put into the atmosphere while going about our daily routine. The carbon calculator can be accessed online at www.lotusgreenability.com. , and can also be downloaded from Google play store on your android phone.

For a real estate company whose motto is “Responsible Urbanization”, Lotus Greens seeks to ensure that the goals of urban development and environmental sustainability are met. Promoting sustainable development holds out solutions to the multitude of problems we face - from climate change and biodiversity loss to resource and water scarcity.

The Lotus Greens carbon footprint calculator will help people to understand how different aspects of their lifestyle and consumption habits affect their personal carbon emissions. As it is all of us have a carbon footprint and add to it every day of our lives. Almost everything we do increases our footprint. But most of us may not be able to contemplate reducing or neutralising the carbon footprint that our routine activities generate.

By helping users to measure the amount of carbon dioxide they create in the course of performing everyday chores – commuting, driving, cooking, cooling or heating homes – the Lotus Green carbon footprint calculator will make it easier to understand and evaluate the environmental impacts of their actions. The knowledge and understanding about the impact of carbon dioxide on the environment and how humans contribute to creating it is not very high. This is in spite of the growing body of scientific evidence showing that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the environment has been increasing over the years.  

According to the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it is "extremely likely" that humans and their growing carbon footprint are the dominant cause of the environment’s increasing toxicity. Over the last decade, CO2 levels have risen by 2.9 per cent. In 2012, developing countries like China, India and Mexico produced 59 per cent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, while industrialized countries and regions like the EU, US and Russia emitted 41 per cent. Currently, India counts among the world’s top three carbon dioxide emitters globally: India’s CO2 emissions grew 43 percent from 2007 to 2012, to reach 596 million tons.

Increasing emissions of carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, is a lead cause of global warming, which is making the world more prone to increased intensity and occurrence of severe droughts, superstorms and floods.  According to various scientific reports on global warming, the incidence of natural disasters worldwide has steadily increased, and has affected about 217 million people every year since 1990.

Not only is global warming making the earth warmer --the period 1983-2012 was probably the warmest in the past 1,400 years --it is causing most glaciers worldwide to lose their mass. Evidence shows that the Antarctic ice sheet is melting faster, from around 30bn tonnes a year in the 1990s to around 147bn tonnes a year now. It is believed that rising temperatures due to global warming are dangerously increasing the risk of sudden glacial lake outburst floods in the Himalayan states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.

To stop increased flow of carbon dioxide into the environment, the IPCC has stipulated that carbon emissions must be reduced in the coming decades, with significant national carbon reduction targets (up to 80% by 2050 vs 1990) being adopted by various countries across the globe. That's the big challenge staring us in the face and it is here that the Lotus Green carbon calculator can make a difference.

Our online carbon calculator is a small step to create awareness around carbon footprint . The launch of online calculator was accompanied by the release of a short animation film on global warming , which has now been viewed over 85,000 times on YouTube. The enthusiastic response to the video makes us believe that sustained long-term reduction of carbon footprint will be within our reach if we spread the word around.