, but there's no easy way to trace the impact we have everyday," said Hiroaki Shimachi, one of the founders of Rinen, the company behind OpenTrace puma sneakers . "We can trace the environmental impact of anything from an SD card to a 747 or even something as simple as home-made bread."

The infrastructure behind this environmental magic is part public wiki, so that produc juicy couture riding boots t manufacturers can enter exact data and part innovative database which can be visually navigated. There's a strong incentive for manufacturers to provide the data, they ge white pumas shoes t a printable OpenTrace number and a 2d bar code which could be read by a cellphone (such 2d bar codes are commonplace in Japan where mobiles are used for everything from paying train fares to grabbing information.)  juicy couture rain boots 

The real magic is how OpenTrace can whip through all of the components of a product you'd buy and derive a score. For example, calculating the relative "greenness" of puma tour cat  a six-pack of beer in aluminum cans vs. a six-pack of glass bottles. OpenTrace not only takes into account the first order environmental costs of aluminum versus glass, a domestic product versus an juicy couture suede boots  import, but the second order costs of processing foodstuffs like rice and wheat, manufacturing hydrocarbon-based materials and transportation costs.

OpenTrace goes  women puma sneaker one giant step past just settling once and for all what's the right answer to "Paper or Plastic?" the next time the bagger asks you at your local store: it let's you track your cumulative CO2 impact as the ultimate  cheap puma speed cat shoes product of the things you buy and the miles you fly. For example, here's Hirofumi Manganji's OpenTrace after flying from Tokyo to San Francisco, buying a new laptop and having lunch:

(Credit: Bob Walsh)  

According to Shimachi, the alpha version (from which the screen shots in this post were taken), will be up soon at the site, but since this is still very much an alpha product, juicy couture leather boots  visitors will be able to view, not enter new data.

Unfortunately, before OpenTrace.org can go from an alpha that impressed more than a few people today to competi new pumas shoes tive advantage for more environmentally-friendly manufacturers, they need to find funding, boil the technology into a marketable web app and frankly overcome the language barrier.

Back in June I happened to mee juicy couture winter boots t these proverbial two guys in a [Tokyo] garage who demoed under non-disclosure OpenTrace to me and three other American bloggers. They had all the passion and drive a star black pumas shoes tup based anywhere needs to succeed. I'm glad today they got the exposure and validation they need to go from brilliant technology to, hopefully, a shelf near you.

Bob Walsh is the co-moderator of the the popular 

  Joel on Software Business of Software forum and a consultant to with startups and microISVs. He writes a blog at 47hats.com, and is the author of two books, Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality and Clear Blogging: How People Blogging Are Changing the World and How You Can Join Them. Topics: Commerce Tags: Launchweek08, TechCrunch Share: Digg Del.icio.us Reddit Facebook Twitter