Your Decarbon profile is where you can set your name, your Annual Carbon Budget, and also some default modifiers that will make your carbon tracking more accurate.
The profile tab
Tap the pencil icon to edit your profile
Your annual carbon budget is a central part of your Decarbon experience. It's the amount of impact on climate change you plan to have in any 1-year period. You want this to be as low as possible!
<aside> 💡 Learn more about the general concept of carbon budgeting here: So what is carbon budgeting?
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All new users to Decarbon start with a budget of 7 metric tons of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalents). That's roughly the amount of carbon emitted per person in the United States that would help keep climate change limited to 1.5 degrees celsius (learn more on Carbon Brief).
This will be HARD. For reference, the average American emits 14.5 metric tons each year!
<aside> 💡 If you have a family or support more people than just yourself, you can increase your budget with the green slider to track those additional people.
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The exact number for your Annual Carbon Budget matters less than what you actually do with it:
If you want to really dive into the details and get a specific carbon budget suggestion, check out what the experts at Carbon Brief suggest.
You can toggle on and off Incognito Mode to hide the purchase names from being displayed in the Impact tab. This could be helpful for if you want to review your budget in a public place or want to show Decarbon to a pal without them seeing your purchase history.
When Incognito mode is on a blue, crossed-out eyeball will appear in the top bar of the Impact tab.
Incognito mode is on and hiding purchase names
Default modifiers are aspects of your life that will adjust what the estimated carbon impact of your purchases are. For example, a vegan diet is about half as much impact as an omnivorous diet.