Sourcemap is a collective tool for transparency and sustainability

While researching today for my dissertation presentation, I came across this really nice website and although not relevant to my project, I found it had an interesting concept and wanted to share the resource. Sourcemap.org was created to increase awareness of the carbon footprint of the everyday products that we consume, their key components of the item and their origins of these materials. The open source platform shares the supply chain behind a number of everyday products, showing the materials, the origin of it each part, the CO2 produced from each part, the distance each part travels to be assembled and the assembly location. It also shows a map with the geographic location of the origin of each part to give a more visual representation of the distance that is travelled in order to highlight the great distances some of the parts have travelled during manufacturing. The one major disadvantage of this site is that most of the products that have been added to the site are products predominately available in the America, which means that the search is quite limited, particularly for those in Europe. But all considered, it is a very interesting and insightful website that makes you more aware of the origins of everyday products, the contributions of many countries to each product and the impact of each product on natural resources. Now more than ever designer need to be more aware of this phenomena and what steps we can do to change this ever growing concern of our impact on natural resources and our carbon footprint.