MapEcos 

 



MapEcos was a collaborative website designed to provide an evenhanded view of industrial environmental performance -- particularly pollution -- and the steps facilities are taking to limit their environmental impacts and benefit their stakeholders. 

The site went online in the October of 2007 and continued in operation till October of 2011.   Eventually, the cost of maintaining the server forced us to close it down.

The site provided data about the emissions from every site reporting toxic release emissions to the US Environmental Protection Agency.  Over 23,000 facilities were shown on the map.   We invited managers from each facility to post information on their efforts to protect the environment.  About 1000 managers provided us with some information about their facility's efforts.  Approximately 300 allowed us to post some of this information to the map. 

The facilities are color coded roughly by their impact.  Those that marked with a redder color have more emissions or more toxic emissions; those with a bluer color fewer or less toxic emissions.  For more information on how we caclulated these effects, please see the original MapEcos guidebook.

Some facilities are marked with green rings.  These are the facilities that voluntarily reported information to MapEcos about the actions they were using to reduce their emissions.

mapecos


The site was visited by tens of thousands of people.  The following map shows the location georgraphica disribution of US users.  The number of users in a 30 mile radius is coded by the color and size of the marker. 
us_small
Although MapEcos only coverd the US, it was used by people around the world.  The map below right shows the location of these users.
world use



More information on MapEcos can be found at HBS working knowledge, FT.Com, and the Economist.