FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Commons is available on iOS and Android in the U.S. and Canada. We'll be expanding to additional countries in the future. If Commons isn’t available in your country yet, get on our waitlist to be the first to know when we arrive.

• Brands are independently evaluated and rated by our carbon experts. When you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. We evaluate each brand independently. Affiliate partnerships in no way influence our brand ratings or reviews.
• When you purchase offsets for flights, gifts, or through Commons’ Climate Stewardship subscription, Commons charges a 20% transaction fee to cover the costs of our time-intensive evaluation and monitoring processes. This is standard for offset providers.

For each product category, our team starts with more popular brands that have the most shoppers. We also prioritize sustainable brands that stand out in the category. We’re evaluating and adding new brands every week.

Your carbon footprint is an estimation of all the emissions that come from the products, services, and energy that you use. Commons calculates the emissions of your purchase by combining information on your lifestyle (via the Carbon Survey) with datasets on the local carbon intensity of production, transportation, and end-of-life use of over 180 spending categories. We aggregate this information to calculate your personalized carbon footprint.

‍

For example, when you purchase energy for your home or gasoline for your car, Commons factors in the energy costs in your area to determine how much you’re purchasing. While the emissions of your grocery bill will be calculated based on how frequently you eat certain meats, since meat is a high-emission food.

‍

Read more about the Commons proprietary carbon calculator to learn more about how we calculate carbon footprints.

Commons uses Plaid to connect to your bank account(s). Plaid is an API trusted by financial companies like Venmo, Mint, Truebill, and Paypal for its bank-level security and support across banking institutions. With Plaid, services (such as financial providers and carbon trackers) can analyze and provide insights about a users’ banking transactions, but they cannot access the bank account itself. 

‍

So when you connect your card(s) to Commons using Plaid, we cannot (and will not) charge your account, withdraw or transfer money, or create a transaction on the account in any way. 

‍

We take privacy seriously. You own your data and we don’t share your data without your consent, and we never sell your data. We don't see or store sensitive information about you or your finances. When you log into your bank account through Plaid, Commons does not see your credentials. We also don't charge you for carbon tracking. Tracking your carbon emissions is free, and always will be. 

‍

Read more in our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.

No. Brands are independently evaluated and rated by our carbon experts. When you buy through our links, we may earn a commission.

Commons' mission is to help you sift through the greenwashing to find the most sustainable choices for you. We're empowering a collective shift to more intentional spending while influencing brands to operate more sustainably.

Tens of thousands of people use the Commons app to find the most sustainable options for their lives, measure their progress, and be part of a collective shift to more sustainable spending.

We’re a small team of carbon experts, data scientists, engineers, writers, and designers passionate about making sustainable living more accessible. Our Founder & CEO, Sanchali Pal, started tracking her carbon footprint in an Excel spreadsheet over 10 years ago because she couldn’t find any good tools to align her life with the world she wanted to live in. You can read more about us here.

Commons has raised $13.5 million in funding. Our investors include Sequoia Capital, climate investors Amasia and Norrsken, and the founders of Headspace, Fitbit, Candy Crush, and Nest. Commons has also received funding from public figures like Maisie Williams and Jay-Z’s Arrive. The company’s starting capital came from grants from Harvard and MIT.

In 2023, the Commons community lowered our collective emissions by 19%. If everyone in the U.S. lowered emissions by that amount, the impact would be equivalent to taking 80% of cars off the road in the U.S. See more in our 2023 Community Impact Report.

Purchasing carbon offsets is a way to compensate for your emissions by supporting projects that are drawing down emissions in one of two ways: 

‍

• They avoid emissions by replacing fossil fuel energy or preventing natural carbon sinks (like forests) from being destroyed.
• They absorb emissions by preserving or expanding natural carbon sinks, or by using technology to suck emissions out of the air. 

‍

Here’s how purchasing offsets works: 

‍

• A climate project works to tackle carbon emissions with efforts like reforestation, soil restoration, or direct air capture. A credit is created for every metric ton of emissions (1,000 kg CO₂e)they avoid or absorb. 
• These carbon credits become offsets when a person or organization purchases them to compensate for their emissions. Offsets should only be purchased once, then retired. A high-integrity offset project will not collect more offset purchases than the credits they’re creating, and wouldn’t have happened without your offset dollars paying for those credits to be produced.
• After an offset if purchased, it should be retired. 

With Commons, you support high-impact projects that avoid or absorb carbon around the world, backed by evidence and analysis. Commons’ Climate Stewardship subscription differs from other subscriptions in three key ways:‍

‍

Your subscription is personalized. When you buy offsets with a traditional, flat-fee subscription, there’s less motivation to lower your emissions. In fact, some people use offsets as permission to pollute. But Commons’ personalized Climate Stewardship subscription rewards you for living lighter. You offset exactly what you buy, and pay less when you emit less.

‍

Our offset partners are regularly evaluated. Our team of experts meticulously evaluates and monitors projects so you don’t have to. We conducted deep evaluations of 24 top offset providers and selected 6.

‍

Our portfolio is diversified. Every offset has a different risk and impact profile. That’s why we curate a portfolio of offsets that balance risk and impact, aligned with the Oxford Offsetting Principles to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Learn more about how we curate projects for the Commons Offset Portfolio.

‍

The Commons team works with experts and third-arty evaluators to regularly vet, monitor, and select evidence-backed projects that support positive outcomes for people and the planet.

‍

We use a portfolio approach to maximize impact by balancing a portfolio of projects that draw down carbon now and in the future.  Our methodology is aligned with the Oxford Offsetting Principles.

‍

In a market that lacks regulation and standardization, Commons sets an example by prioritizing and monitoring high-integrity offset projects on an ongoing basis. If a project is selected but fails to continue to meet our evaluation standards, it’ is removed from our portfolio.

‍

High-integrity carbon offsets are:

‍

• Verifiable: Confirmed by a third party
• Enforceable: Recorded to ensure they can only be claimed once
• Additional: Wouldn’t have happened otherwise
• Permanent: Hard to reverse
• Transparent: Well-documented

‍

At Commons, we also believe that offsets should have transformative potential to contribute to just and sustainable world. Our transformative potenatial criteria are:

‍

• Efficiency: Low overhead costs
• Scalability: Can contribute meaningfully to climate targets
• Catalytic potential: Advances innovative approaches
• Environmental benefits: Impact on local ecosystems‍
• Community benefits: Support for local communities

‍

No single person can change our economic systems. But collectively, our choices do have influence. 

‍

As consumers, we influence over 65% of global greenhouse gas emissions (Ivanova et al., 2016). And research shows that an average person can reduce their emissions by 5-25%, especially if they receive real-time information on their carbon footprint (Jones and Kammen, 2011) (Moran et al, 2018).

‍

Collective action starts with individuals, sparks community changes, and transforms companies and systems. Examples of collective action sparking systems change are all around us. A few we’ve been following recently include:

‍

• In early 2023, new data showed that the ozone layer is on track to fully receiver in the next forty years as a result of phasing out 88% of ozone depleting chemicals.
• In 2021, France moved to ban short-haul domestic flights.
• In 2021, the US passed a $1 trillion dollar infrastructure bill in November 2021 which allocates a historic $47 billion for climate resilience in the US. 
• In May of 2021, Engine No.1 staged a successful shareholder rebellion at ExxonMobile.