Climate friend or foe
This information is now available to consumers of any product in just a few moments. It is all down to the software tool ProNaWi, which has been funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) and developed under the project coordination of Valley web developer akaryon. The project also involved the system house BMD, the Interdisciplinary Landscape Ecology Bureau (Fli) and the working group on sustainable building at the Graz University of Technology. Graz ProNaWi has been designed as a decision support tool. The aim is to reward ecological shopping – away from quantity discounts towards value discounts. The software also supports suppliers of ERP and BI systems and consumer Apps, who want to automatically incorporate information on sustainability in the digital products they offer, as well as database operators who are seeking to expand the quantity, quality and value-added opportunities from their data.
This is how the ecological footprint is calculated
Using ProNaWi, the calculation of product sustainability covers a range of aspects including manufacture and transport, as well as all the ingredients. The software tool achieves this by accessing existing life cycle databases. ProNaWi calculates the CO2 equivalents based on this data as well as in comparison with similar reference products. For example, a kilogram of apples, prepacked in plastic, which were produced in Styria and transported by truck to Vienna for sale, will show a value of 0.16kg CO2e, which the consumer can access. The quality of the data is being continuously improved by machine learning. Using one or more interfaces, ProNaWi can readily be integrated into merchandise management systems, offering professional users and consumers high-quality and continuously updated sustainability information on products. Full details about ProNaWi can be found at https://pronawi.at/.
