Add "energy conservation" to list of purposes for the seemingly never-ending stream of new Facebook applications.
GoLoco is a new ride-sharing organization and Facebook application that encourages students to "go green to save green" while driving their cars.
GoLoco founder and CEO, Robin Chase, came to Tech as part of Sustainability Week to help stress the importance of conservation.
Amongst other speeches, Chase visited an Urban Studies classroom Monday morning.
During the lecture, Chase said that if there are efforts made to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide by the year 2015, we only have a 50/50 chance of preventing catastrophic consequences.
To emphasize her point, Chase showed that 20 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted is from driving personal vehicles.
Very often when individuals think of conserving fuel, they turn to a fuel efficient car as a solution. However, according to Chase's lecture, if everyone in the United States purchased a fuel efficient car, this would only reduce fuel usage by 5 percent, which is not enough. Each mile a car drives, it produces one pound of carbon dioxide emissions, and it takes a tree one month to sequester this amount of carbon dioxide.
Chase suggested that carbon taxes, and road and congestion pricing might help curb emissions and increase carpooling.
Carbon taxes would require utility plants to be allotted only a certain level of carbon emissions and to be charged by the pound for them. Road pricing would be similar to a system in London in which drivers must pay $16 a day to use the roads. This system in London lowered the amount of driving nearly 25 percent overnight, Chase said.
Congestion pricing is similar to road tolls; but, would increase the toll according to the amount of vehicles that are driving on it.
Chase also promoted the use of the GoLoco application as a means of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
The application is free to join on Facebook and allows users to post road trips they plan to make.
The application can calculate the cost of the trip and funds can be transferred online for a 10 percent transaction fee, said Chase in her lecture.
If passengers and drivers prefer to exchange funds in person, that is an option as well.
The application allows users to control who is able to see your trip that has been posted. There will also be an automatic e-mail sent to you when someone in your network is going to the same place as you.
So far 150 people have signed up for GoLoco at Tech, Chase said.
Debby Freed, the Alternative Transportation Manager for the Office of Transportation at Virginia Tech, said that the university's partnership with GoLoco is not costing them any money.
"Traditional ride boards did not help students get home for breaks and we were looking for another option, and at that time GoLoco presented itself," Freed said.
While most of the users of GoLoco are primarily students, there are several Tech employees that have taken part in the new application, Freed said.
Prior to the application on Facebook, GoLoco had an independent website that users could subscribe to in order to post their trips.
"Before GoLoco was with Facebook, I had already gone in and signed up for GoLoco directly from the webpage. It is now Facebook driven," Freed said.
Freed learned about GoLoco while working with another university.
This application comes at a convenient time, right in the midst of Virginia Tech's first Sustainability Week, a week-long series of events that will focus on educating the community on how to lessen environmental impact.
Denny Cochrane, Universities Sustainability Coordinator, believes that the week will shed light on a lot of important topics, and generally benefit the community.
"The nice thing about the sustainability theme is that the goal is to use resources we've been provided in a very consciousness way ... to ensure we have sufficient quantity of those resources for future generations," Cochrane said.