This morning I participated in a Q&A secssion with Martin Gutierrez from the Go Green Foundation, John Shen from Nokia Labs, and Jeff Burke and Mark Hansen from UCLA about PEIR (Personal Environmental Impact Report), an environmental initiative by UCLA researchers that Nokia and Go Green are funding.

PEIR is an application for Symbian OS 3rd Ed, Windows Mobile 6 and soon Android handsets. It measures your impact on the environment by using location data uploaded from your phone to create a  personalized report about your environmental impact and exposure.  In Southern California PEIR  is able to correlate  your location with particulate matter creation and exposure,  fast food exposure and transportation-related  C02 creation.  Elsewhere PEIR is limited to tracking transportation related carbon impact.

Users can view logs of their trips on the PEIR website.  The logs show your route on a map with detailed statistics on freeway usage and the C02 and particulate matter emissions you generated including the portion of your emissions that were generated in the vicinity of “sensitive” sites like schools, and hospitals.  Facebook users can add a PEIR Facebook app to their profiles which shows their environmental impact and exposure  and how they rank in comparison with their friends (image, above).

PEIR is currently in closed Beta.  If you are interested in trying it there is a  form where you can register to be notified when the Beta opens to new Beta users.  The PEIR Facebook application (which requires the phone app to work) is available here.

PEIR seems like a good way to raise environmental awareness and encourage individuals to think about the environmental impact of their behavior.  Nokia is among the “greenest” big companies and has done a lot to reduce the environmental impact of their production facilities and to remove toxic materials from their products, efforts that won them top ranking in Greenpeace’s “Guide to Greener Electronics“.  The company has also led the way in making mobile chargers more energy efficent. Kudos to Nokia for adding to their environmental contribution with support for PEIR.