By Andrew
Is anyone out there curious about where the materials in your computer, clothes or shoes come from? I’ve always been interested in following the carbon trail for some of my things, especially the more carbon intensive ones. So I was pleasantly surprised to find the site www.sourcemap.org the other day while surfing the net. Sourcemap.org lets you explore two pathways to follow the carbon trail of your everyday goods. The whole vision behind Sourcemap is to empower users and
organizations by making supply chains more visible. I personally think that this is a great idea. In today’s disembodied and shrinking world where you can communicate with anyone within seconds, we begin to forget how large our planet really is. It takes a lot of resources to move goods no matter how far they are sourced from your home. By exploring this site I think that we can all come to appreciate the global scale that our consumer driven society has come to encompass. You can research on your own where particular parts/resources are sourced and manufactured by creating your own Sourcemap or you can examine the Sourcemaps created by other members. For example, some members have created maps that examine goods ranging from cars to Ikea furniture. The only downside I see about Sourcemaps is that the maps are all member generated and that there doesn't seem to be any system in place to check the validity of these maps and how accurate they are. But that shouldn't stop you from checking it out. It should be seen as an incentive to create your own sourcemap, and one that has been properly researched.
So go on the site and explore. Register for an account, play with the interface and maybe contribute a valuable Sourcemap to the online community. You never know what interesting tid-bits you might stumble upon.
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