How does my travel impact the environment?

Res Witschi, Head of Sustainability at Swisscom, presents the Swiss Climate Challenge.

Around half of all CO₂ emissions in Switzerland are caused by people travelling, including flying and travel abroad. At the touch of a button, a new app now shows the environmental impact of your journeys compared to your fellow travellers. The Swiss Climate Challenge, a joint initiative of Swisscom, South Pole and Engagement Migros with support from SwissEnergy, provides transparency on the environmental impact of your journeys as well as game-based incentives and guidance on how to start making changes.

Climate change is one of the great challenges of our time. Nevertheless, most people find it hard to see how they can make a difference on a personal level. Not least because, before now, calculating one's own CO₂ footprint required considerable effort and could only be estimated. Swisscom, South Pole and Engagement Migros, with support from SwissEnergy, intend to change all this with the Swiss Climate Challenge initiative. Today, they are launching a new 'piggyback' application that can be used to measure your own mobility behaviour at the touch of a button from popular media apps. The Swiss Climate Challenge thus creates your own personal carbon footprint and shows how easily it could be reduced – and the impact this would have. “We know from many conversations with sustainability-conscious customers that there is high demand for honest and transparent CO₂ analyses," explains Res Witschi, Head of Sustainability at Swisscom. "Our technology is able to show everyone how their individual actions affect the climate."

Reducing your carbon footprint is like counting steps

Anyone taking part in the Swiss Climate Challenge can see at a glance how much CO₂ is generated by different forms of transport – and the environmental impact of their travel compared to the population in their own canton or Switzerland as a whole. They also discover how much the climate would improve or deteriorate if the entire world population followed their example. To incentivise behavioural change, participants can also measure themselves against others. This can either be done anonymously with other users or openly with friends and family who can be invited to join in the Challenge.

René Estermann, part of South Pole's management team, emphasises the importance of each individual action for climate protection. "The Swiss Climate Challenge is designed above all to inspire people. The climate crisis can create a feeling of being powerless, but we can all take action. South Pole is pleased, together with the project partners, to be able to motivate more people in Switzerland to adopt a climate-friendly mobility behaviour."