Wren

Reduce and offset your carbon footprint

32 followers

Reduce and offset your carbon footprint

32 followers

Wren is a web app that makes it easy to offset your carbon footprint. Our mission is to build tools that help everyone act against climate change. We're starting with a subscription service that offsets your footprint because it's a simple and direct way to take action against climate change.

Launch tags:Crowdfunding•Climate Tech

Launch Team

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Wren

Maker

Hey Product Hunt! Thanks @katmanalac for Hunting us! We're super excited to share Wren with you today. Believe it or not, we started working together to build HR software. We stuck with it for an embarrassingly long amount of time, but eventually realized that HR software wasn't our thing. We wanted to fight climate change. First, we tried making vegan food. Each step up the food chain is a 10x increase in required resources, so we thought we could save the earth by eating efficiently. We all cut out meat, dairy, etc. to keep a lower carbon footprint diet and we wanted to make it easy for others to do the same. As you might expect, a bunch of hackers cooking vegan food in their tiny college apartment didn't generate much traction. So we went back to doing what we knew how to do: writing software. We realized that despite our best efforts we wouldn't get our carbon footprint down to 0. We buy food that's been shipped to grocery stores, we cook using gas stoves, we even fly across the country sometimes! Most people we know have a similar challenge: they can reduce, reuse, and recycle but even still they feel like they're a burden on our climate. It's just so frustrating to do everything you can to fight climate change and still feel guilty about the way you live your life. That's why we built Wren. Governments around the world are not acting to stop climate change quickly enough. Every year, we're emitting more and more but it feels like we're trying even harder to be good to the environment. With Wren, you can do more than reduce, you can eliminate your footprint by funding projects that clearly prevent deforestation. We need governments to own up to the challenges of climate change. But while we put pressure on them, we can do everything we can as individuals to reduce our emissions. We just started working on this a few weeks ago, so we don't have everything figured out. PLEASE give us your feedback so we can make this better! Let's get millions of people to live carbon neutral!

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7yr ago

Miami Tech Twitter Directory

@katmanalac @landon_brand Pivoting from HR software to a climate change app is a hell of a move. I think you made the right choice.

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7yr ago

@katmanalac @landon_brand i dont think any governments around the world will be a part of the solution. But inicitatives like this will move mountains if we all join in!

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7yr ago

Wren

Maker

@anders_denne While governments certainly aren't incentivized to solve climate change in the short term, I sure hope they will join in on the solution soon...! In the meantime, we all individually need to play our part. Thank you for your support <3

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7yr ago

Wren

Maker

@katmanalac @dkb868 I don't recommend building HR software LOL. If anyone is considering HR software vs. building something to mitigate climate change, let me convince you to work on something for our planet!

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7yr ago

Trolley

Thanks so much, team! Awesome idea! How do you ensure that your partner "projects" adequately offset the carbon footprints of your users? Do you do QA at all?

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7yr ago

Wren

Maker

Hi Adena! We're getting a strange error when trying to reply to this comment—messaged PH support about the problem.

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7yr ago

Wren

Maker

@adena_bauer1 It depends on the project, but we usually do several of these: 1. Look at all the documentation they have of the project—photos, videos, data, etc. 2. Read a few papers about appropriate methodologies for the project to ensure we're on the same page about how the carbon is counted 3. Asking our project partners the followup questions we have to make sure everything is up to our standard Then, we get ongoing updates about the projects from our partners. If something happens and a project were to fail somehow, we would offset with another project, like insurance.

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7yr ago

"How can an individual like me make a difference?" - said 10+ billions of people (gotta count the ancestors). This product encourages people to do their part and contribute what they can. Can't wait to see how the community grows.

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7yr ago

Harmony

As you probably know, the major culprit of our climate crisis is the food industry. I have been dreaming of an app that lets people scan products in supermarkets to instantly track their energy consumption. Is this something you've been thinking about? IMO, you need a drastically more accessible interface in order to reach greater impact. It needs to be easier to use than Snapchat. If you'd like to discuss this more thoroughly, I'm open for a quick call this week. I just emailed you a copy of this message.

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7yr ago

Wren

Maker

@louisondumont Hi Louison! We got your email. We'll send you some of our thoughts on that thread...

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7yr ago

is there a way to see suggestions on how to improve your footprint based on you results? that would be a dope solution (that's most likely have already been developed, i'm just to lazy to find it)

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6yr ago

Wren

Maker

@mukut Yep—we just released a new version of our calculator. After answering a few questions we start to generate your Carbon Report, which has visualizations and suggestions related to your footprint.

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6yr ago

My carbon footprint is pretty low. I don’t own a car, I bike to work and live in an apartment with no air conditioning. However, I like to travel abroad. Project Wren gives me a verified way to offset my flights. It’s great that they allow you to direct your money to specific projects. The site is easy to navigate. Subscribing to a project was simple. I look forward to seeing what other projects they add.

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7yr ago

Wren

Maker

@raloney Thanks, Ryan! Keep an eye out for a project update today on your subscription to Buen Jardin de Callaru—we just received some interesting map data that shows sites of illegal logging in June 🗺

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7yr ago

Trolley

Such an exciting product! So many fun ways things can go: - See the impact of the global wren community - Import financial / email data to have more wholistic calculator - Get recommendations on which lifestyle changes you could make that would be sweet-spot of having an outsized impact on your footprint AND being realistic given your preferences. - Be able to add smaller community projects like planting 15 trees. Would need to figure out a way to verify projects at scale. - Breakdowns of why average carbon footprint responsibility is so different across countries. - Contribute to projects an an index-fund type way.

Pros:

Personal carbon footprint compared to country / global averages. Efficient design, clear footprint calculations, project verification.

Cons:

Despite well-designed project pages, can be hard to compare projects. Not clear how to interact with Wren as my footprint changes.

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7yr ago

Wren

Maker

So many awesome ideas @calvinlegassick! For the projects, right now we're sticking with in depth stories on a project's environmental + social impact but we're definitely still figuring out the best way to display projects.

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7yr ago

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