You’ve thought a lot about your carbon footprint — the amount you’re contributing to global warming and the general decline of the planet. But what about your carbon handprint, the net amount of good you do for the environment? Is it actually possible for that to outweigh the harm you cause? LOL no of course not, but at least the Handprinter app will help you quantify how badly you’re falling short.
Handprinter lets you improve your slightly less-of-a-monstrous-drain-on-earth’s-resources score either by pledging to carry out a particular green-minded idea (changing your bulbs to CFLs, biking to work, that kind of thing), or by suggesting an idea and having other people pick it up. Ideally, green memes would spread through the Handprinter community, and each idea would have a ripple effect to slightly lower carbon footprints around the globe.
In practice, we’ll have to see how excited people get — the project couldn’t quite manage to get a Kickstarter funded, so there may be some enthusiasm gap. Gentle suggestion, guys? Nobody likes to cooperate — let them get points for improving the environment, so they can smoke their friends. Even better, let them exchange those points for more moves in Candy Crush. Boom. New “it” app.