Systainability indexes idea

There is a lot of talk about Green House Gases GHG , but this is very limited view on the problem. To put it simply: when something produces small amount of GHG it does not mean that it is good thing of product, because it can be toxic and it can cause depletion of resources.

In addition to that it is hard to compare products. So I have idea: what if we start building global database of products that can be queried by bar code, and have 2 indexes assigned:

- sustainability index;

- toxicity index;

Like this:

They are very simple to understand:

when we divide time to replenish resources used to produce this product by useable life of the product we get the index. If it less than 1 then it is good, if bigger - bad.

Same for toxins: we divide time to safely dispose toxins released during production and destruction of the product by the useful life of the product we get the index. And the same: less than 1 is good, more than 1 is bad

How to arrive at those numbers is quite controversial, and therefore Wikipedia like model might work - people contribute to the calculations, and eventually we will arrive at consensus.

I would love to work on the implementation and apply my expertise in Grid Computing and scalable systems to get this done and help improving human quality of life and help ecosystem to stay healthy.