To help professionals control their data consumption and control their carbon footprint, startup Fruggr offers an automated calculation tool that can measure the environmental and social impact of companies’ online activities in real time.
Digital4Better, the company behind the Fruggr.io platform, launched in June 2020 when the number of online users skyrocketed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Two years later, she completed a €2 million fundraiser to boost her activism. Ever since the tool was released to the market, the observation has been clear: “The environmental score is poor, all sectors combined,” Frédéric Marchand, CEO of Fruggr, told .
There is still work to be done in this area. To create its tool, the proactive startup started by selecting 40 environmental and social criteria such as carbon emissions, GDPR compliance, inclusiveness, or even eco-design.
The Frugg model is based on the calculation of “exact data”. According to Frédéric Marchand, some quantifiable elements such as equipment life, average page weight and CO2 consumption are easily integrated into the software. However, other criteria are more difficult, such as the ethics of the algorithm, he admits.
Scalable Estimation
“This inventory comes with an attempt to prioritize data,” adds the CEO. This organizational work is key: the clearer the design, the more the end user will be able to clearly read the results and draw conclusions for action.
The platform works with large volumes, for large accounts the ability to repeat the process at regular intervals. “More than a static balance, we wanted to get a dynamic and renewable result several times a year,” he elaborates.
After carefully reviewing performance metrics, the platform provides clients with areas for improvement in order to achieve their corporate social responsibility goals. In parallel, Digital4Better provides services to help companies operate by providing them with advice on design and development.
Before attacking the professional market, Frugg started by developing a free user app to calculate mobile data consumption. The idea came about following the passage of the Waste Control Act, which requires ISPs and mobile operators to report the amount of data consumed and the equivalent of the associated greenhouse gas emissions.