An app for setting and achieving personal sustainability goals

A design student has developed a platform that helps people to develop more achievable sustainable habits, based on individual circumstances

Spotted: Most of us want to live more sustainable lives. But not everyone is able to easily adapt their lives to accommodate this. For example, most people can’t afford to buy an all-electric car, or to eat only organic food. Now, Glasgow School of Art product design graduate Euan Robertson has developed a platform, called Tacc, that might help.

Tacc “targets people who have a desire to be more sustainable but feel daunted by what might be required,” by creating a service that analyses each user’s unique circumstances and providing a personalised plan demonstrating steps they can take. The digital platform provides clear goals and visual data which helps users to understand how even small, sustainable acts can add up throughout the day. It also helps users to connect to like-minded people so they can share their experiences and suggestions. 

Robertson was inspired by the realisation that, in many parts of the world, a macro approach to sustainability is unsustainable. Instead, he focused on helping people to develop more sustainable habits on a micro scale. The project includes a tacc logo which represents “a fingerprint of the environment” at a particular moment in time. The logo changes constantly, to indicate the smoothing out of the imbalance in the distribution of global resources. 

Euan describes his project as, “a beckon of change … where the problem and solution are intertwined. The name for the service is based on what I believe are the 4 fundamental pillars required to plant the seed that will grow into this global mindset shift: trust, awareness, consideration, and cooperation… I can see tacc taking many forms through future development, and be used more as guidance and an ideology rather than a fixed solution.”

Achieving sustainability for all may well become an increasing area of focus in the near future. At Springwise, we have already seen this concept take off with innovations such as energy-efficient designs to cool homes in Egypt and an app that helps people share unwanted food.

Explore more: Sustainability Innovations | Computing & Tech Innovations