We created Commons to take the guesswork out of climate action. Commons harnesses the collective power of people to tackle the climate crisis, starting with the emissions from their own spending.
Use the Commons app to:
We’re a small, passionate team headquartered in Oakland, CA and scattered throughout the US. Each of us is on our own climate journey, adopting more practices to live in balance with the planet. We want to help people tap into the power of their spending to influence companies and governments and take faster action on climate change.
Our team brings years of experience from companies like Tesla, Stitch Fix, Strava, Axios, and Dave. Our founder, Sanchali Pal, started Commons in 2019. She wanted to calculate her personal emissions so she could see how to prioritize her efforts. So she did what any economics major would do — she started a spreadsheet. Commons has come a long way since then, becoming a critical climate tool for thousands of people.
Commons has raised $3.5 million in seed funding. We’re funded by Sequoia Capital, climate investors like Amasia and Baruch Future Ventures, and founders of lifestyle apps Headspace, Fitbit, and Candy Crush. We got our initial starting capital in grants from Harvard and MIT.
In 2021, the Commons community lowered our collective emissions by 21%. If everyone in the U.S. lowered emissions by that same amount, the impact would be equivalent to taking every car off the road and shutting down 40% of coal plants.
Your carbon footprint is an estimation of all the emissions that come from the products and services that you use.
To calculate your personalized, real-time carbon footprint, Commons uses lifestyle information from your Carbon Survey and purchase information from your spending. Fill in the Carbon Survey to get a set estimate of your carbon emissions, then sync your spending to get your personalized carbon footprint.
Here are some examples of how Commons calculates the carbon footprint of your purchases:
Read about the Commons proprietary carbon calculator to learn more about how we calculate carbon footprints. If you want to dig in even further, check out our white paper.
We take privacy seriously. You own your data and we don’t see or store sensitive information about you or your finances. We don’t share your data without your consent, and we never sell your data. Tracking your carbon emissions is free, and always will be.
Commons uses Plaid to connect to your bank account(s). Plaid is the same API that provides bank-level security to financial apps like Venmo. Plaid is a platform that allows services, such as financial providers and carbon trackers, access to a user’s banking transactions without giving them access to the bank account itself. These services can analyze and provide insights about a user’s banking transactions but cannot charge the account, withdraw or transfer money, or in create a transaction on the account in any way.
Plaid is trusted by companies such as Mint, Venmo, Truebill, Chime, Samsung and many because of its security and support across banking institutions. Read more in our Privacy Policy.
When you purchase offsets, Commons charges a 17% transaction fee to cover the costs of time-intensive evaluation and monitoring. Over time, we aim to reduce this fee as our process becomes more efficient and repeatable.
Purchasing carbon offsets is a way to compensate for your emissions by supporting projects that are avoiding or absorbing emissions. When you purchase carbon offsets, your money goes to an organization that offsets emissions in one of two ways:
Commons uses a portfolio approach to maximize impact by balancing a portfolio of projects that draw down carbon now and in the future. Our team works with experts to regularly vet, monitor, and partner with third-party evaluators to pick evidence-backed projects that support positive outcomes for people and the planet.
In a market that lacks regulation and standardization, Commons sets an example by prioritizing high-quality offset projects.High-quality carbon offsets are:
At Commons, we also believe offsets should contribute to a more just and sustainable world, so we look at:
Learn more about how we construct the portfolio and choose projects.
With Commons, you support high-impact projects that avoid or absorb carbon around the world, backed by evidence and analysis. Our approach differs in three key ways:
It’s 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 Neutral subscription rewards you for living lighter. You offset exactly what you buy, and pay less when you emit less.
It’s rigorous and prioritizes environmental justice. Our team of experts meticulously evaluates and monitors projects so you don’t have to. In 2021, we evaluated over 24 top offset providers and selected 6.
It’s 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.
No single person can change our economic systems, but collectively, our choices influence corporations and governance. Collective action starts with individuals, sparks community changes, and transforms companies and systems.
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).
