If you’ve ever wondered what impact – if any – your daily recycling or water-saving efforts have on the environment, there is a new app that wants to help you keep track of your contribution in a very visual way. The app, called “MyEarth,” was designed by University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Human Ecology professor Nancy Wong and uses a diary format in which you can choose daily activities to reduce your carbon emissions and energy consumption.

Tracking sustainability efforts

Inspired by food-tracking apps that help users monitor calorie intake and eating habits, Wong and her team created “MyEarth” to let users set up and check off daily activities across five categories: electricity, recycling, travel, food and usage. Activities range from easy-to-do things like recycling a milk bottle to more intricate activities like installing a high-efficiency toilet to save water and reduce the impact on wastewater treatment projects.

The reward for checking off daily activities in the diary is a running total of saved carbon units. A number is far too abstract for most people to grasp the impact their efforts have, and Wong wanted the app to show users in a very visual way what impact smaller individual actions have toward their overall goal.

Save a polar bear

The result? When the app is first installed, a polar bear clings to a tiny iceberg. As users accumulate saved carbon units, the iceberg grows.

“The iceberg is going to grow, and then, eventually, the bear can sit on it,” Wong said in a statement. “I want it to grow organically so that it gets bigger, so you can have another bear, so then you can have a bear family.”

Wong added that in order for conservation-focused behaviors to become sustainable, they need to be simple and understandable. This is what motivated her to work on “MyEarth” in a hope that the app would help people pick appropriate energy-saving activities and make them a daily priority.

“There is a real disconnect between what people say that they want to do in terms of their attitudes toward the environment and conservation and translating that into actual behavior,” she said. “Carbon units are too abstract for people to understand. Translating conservation behaviors into something tangible, such as a growing iceberg, could help.”

The app is free and available on iOS and Android.

Screenshot: SiliconANGLE via Google Play